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
-
Are FAQ's Pages Still Useful?
I know there has been a lot of discussion lately about FAQs pages and I'm wondering when and if they are still warranted useful and what if they have positive or negative effects on page rankings. Regards, John Brown
Content Development | | JohnBrown75
Essay Writer0 -
I went and added a H1 on my posts, but it is saying the issue was not fixed. Any ideas?
I "thought" I fixed a bunch of missing H1's on my blog, but when recrawled said the issue is still there. Any ideas on what I may be doing wrong or how to fix? I'm not sure what to do other than put in an H1 heading-which I did. Thanks! Jamie
Content Development | | JamieReinhart0 -
Using Product Descriptions in Meta Description
Hi All We have over 10000 Products and a while ago we spent some time adding Product Descriptions to the Product Pages, For Example we have Product - Black Snazaroo Face Paint Product Description - Great for Childrens parties, fundraising events, Halloween or other festive faces. An easy makeup to apply and remove. All Snazaroo face paints are Non toxic, Fragrance free and Skin friendly. Snazaroo is suitable for all skin types, however it is always recommended you do a skin patch test on a small area before full application. Unfortuantly our Meta Descriptions really need some work, for example this same page contains the following meta descriptions We realise this could be holding our site back. Is it ok to use the same Product Description inside the Meta Description Tags also, for example can we use the Meta Description for this Page - Thanks
Content Development | | AMG1000 -
Using Brand Descriptions
We have an online site with approximately 800 products. When we add new products we typically use the photos and product description provided by the brand. The problem is there are numerous other sites using the same descriptions. All other content on the site is original. Is having small blocks of content that are the same on multiple sites likely to cause problems with Google?
Content Development | | twitime0 -
What are the best widgets to use on Wordpress? And what is most useful on Wordpress for content syndication?
We are in the process of researching the best plugins and widgets for our clients' blogs. It appears that SEO by Yoast is most popular for 2013 so far. Any recommendations on which widgets we should be using or plugins for content syndication? If we use something like the Jetpack plugin, would this do the trick?
Content Development | | qlkasdjfw0 -
How to use articles effectively in a blog.
I wanted to start a blog so I could get some longer tail search term results. I am a knowledge expert in my area but am very busy as an entrepreneur so I had been putting it off for some time. It occurred to me that I might be able to outsource the article writing and I have started doing that. I have either come up with or have approved the topics. I am a very critical editor and demand high quality writing. The articles are all original. We are proofreading everything to make sure the articles are of high quality and inform readers about the subject. I plan to only put external links in the articles that link out to the sources for the information that was used to write the articles. We are also using pictures info graphics and video where possible. I plan to close the comments because, while we have had a website for some time and get some visitors (2500 per month) we are new to blogging and do not have a following that would post comments. My questions is this.......will these be viewed negatively by Google? I think this will be good content but I don't want to do anything to negatively affect us.
Content Development | | AndreB0 -
How to make use of blog networks?
I read on a forum recently that someone was using blog networks as his primary tool for SEO. I'm not sure what he meant beyond this, however... Can anyone provide tips on how I might use one, and which are some of the best? Thank you very much in advance.
Content Development | | ZakGottlieb710 -
Are post tags on blogs still useful?
Hello I have a number of sites on Wordpress which all still use the post tag feature. Is this something that I should really be avoiding due to duplicate content issues in the url's of the site, or is it still something that can help SEO wise? I only ask as I did a crawl diagnostics report on SEOmoz and it found that 48 of my title elements were too short due to these tags in the URL's. If you do all suggest I keep using them, should they be 3 odd words which are keywords? Thanks in advance.
Content Development | | mozUser14692366292850