Use Of H1 Tags
-
I just have a quick question. I have seen a few people mention that the use of more than 1 H1 tag has little bearing on things.
I am trying to sort out a site for a friend and it has 2 H1 tags. My issue is that it is ranking for a quite competitive keyword (don't know how as the whole site layout is a total mess) but in my efforts to clean up the site I am wondering if I should actually reduce the No of H1 Tags to 1 or leave 'as is' for fear of breaking something.
Thanks
Paul
-
I wouldn't worry about 2 H1 tags if that's how the page works naturally. It's more important to structure your headers in the correct order, so don't have a H2 before you've had a H1, for example.
See Google's Matt Cutts on the issue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIn5qJKU8VM
HTML5 might be changing things as there are more tags to specify page sections. You probably don't have to worry about that yet though.
-
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the reply, much appreciated. I think i will go ahead and remove the H1. Although the site uses CSS it is pretty crap all in all so I might as well change it now as we try and sort the site out.
I just wanted to be sure that I would not trigger something by removing one of them.
Thanks
Paul
-
Hi Paul
As you'll probably know, the H1 tag has a lot less of an influence on the Googlebot nowadays. IF it were to come across a site with like, 8 H1s there might be a slight chance of it thinking "this site is over-optimising", but two H1s on a page shouldn't have any risk of doing this.
In super-onpage-best-practice-land, I'd say if you could get rid of one of the H1s, I'd do so - as having just one H1 would let Google be a bit more certain what the page was about. But of course, the H1 is not the be all and end all and the Googlebot will almost certainly detect what your page is about even if it does have two conflicting H1s.
Consider as well the design of the website. If the site uses a CSS theme that makes H1s just seem a lot more useful to use, I wouldn't be worried about using 2.
You certainly wouldn't break anything by removing an H1 - just deduce whether it's necessary. If it comes at a severe detriment to style and the look of the page, I wouldn't bother. If not, then yeah, removing an H1 may help a bit, but the effect won't be huge.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does using Articlebase articles on your site push your rank down?
Hello All, I launched a website (www.hrpayrollsystems.net) last year. I'm very new to the SEO world so I'm still seeing what works and what doesn't. We recently republished some articles from articlebase.com that I think may have hurt us in SEO. Does Google see our site as having duplicate content and then penalize us? Our top keyword isn't even ranking anymore when I put it in the sites that tell you where you show up. Help!
Content Development | | HRISGuy0 -
Should we be using a blog for news
Our domain has/had a blog on a seperate subdomain. However we were a little slack in always keeping this up to date when we are particularly busy. Rather than reinstating the blog, I have been adding all our new articles directly onto the website rather than as blog posts. Is there any advantage from an SEO perspective to posting articles to a blog rather than as content on a site?
Content Development | | dsmdesign0 -
Is anyone using slashshot to promote themselves
hi, i am just wondering if anyone is using slashshot to promote themselves and if so how do you join to get your articles and news on the site
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
How can I rank using translated content?
My friend has a website with similar content to mine, in a different language however. He has allowed me to translate his content if I link to it every post (can be nofollow). Does Google penalize me for clearly translated content? How can I make sure it ranks well? BTW, if I convince him that I don't link to him, is it better SEO-wise? Best,
Content Development | | kikocherman
Cherman0 -
What is the best practice for using the same content on two pages?
I have two websites in a very similar niche(s)...I have good unique content article that I would like to use on both sites because it adds value to the visitor experience.. Example: Science of Colors would be very useful for my seattle house painting paint colors page. I want to have content so they do not need to leave the site to navigate to second site. Would the identical content trigger a penalty or would it be crawled, ignored, and not indexed. Does having a rel=authorship on one site trump the site..Or is it a pile of BAD.
Content Development | | johnshearer0 -
Leap of Faith - Damm the consequences - Title Tag Change
the crazy things we do mid week. But after reading Cyrus' post on beating Panda I went back to my website design site http://www.grangewebdesign.com which I had set up a plugin which had all my posts setup as Website Design - %%title%% So basically every Title tag had Website Design in front of it. REadingthis post now it suggests that this is bad practice so I just changed it to %%title%% which now of course means that I should perhaps look more closely at the titees I have been using. Was embedding the Website Design in front of the post overkill? thoughts appreciated...
Content Development | | kdaly1000 -
Where is microdata (schema.org) already being used by major search engines?
I know Google recently launched their recipes search, but apart from this where else are you seeing microdata being used?
Content Development | | nicole.healthline0 -
Posting youtube videos on your site-use irframe or "old embed code"
If you choose "embed" now, youtube gives you the choice of using an iframe: <iframe width="430" height="352" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/0-nKXALtHWs?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe> or, the old embed code: <object width="430" height="352"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/0-nKXALtHWs?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0-nKXALtHWs?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="430" height="352" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></object> Is either better when it comes to seo?
Content Development | | MarieHaynes0