Recommendations for the length of h1 tags and how much does it matter. What is the major disadvantage if the h1 tags are slightly longer.

[MariaMcGrath]

recommendations for  the length of h1 tags and how much does it matter. What is the major disadvantage if the h1 tags are slightly longer.

[ninjahippo]

Think of your page like the front of a newspaper.

Your H1 is your big headline. Short sharp and to the point. People skim pages when reading, but will read headlines. If the H1 catches the attention they are more inclined to read on.

Continue skimming down the page of the newspaper (your page) you may skip 'normal text' but your eyes catch the next H2, which is like your newspaper sub-title.

I went to a Matt Bailey seminar once, and he did a great piece on how pages catch the attention and how people read/skim pages. He has a book which also covered it.

[ClaytonJ]

The h1 tag should help the customer - so it should be customer centric. You have a split part of a second to capture the customers attention so often short and sweet matching a variation of the target keyword phrase is the way to go.

[MikeRoberts]

From my understanding, there is technically no limit to the length of an H1 tag. Rule of thumb for me was always to keep it short and to the point. You don't want to water down any relevancy gained from the h1 by shoving too much into it.