Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Page Title versus H1 title
-
What's the difference between the Page Title and the H1 title? It seems like both summarize the page. Is it a wasted opportunity to make them the same? Should they be similar but slightly different?
-
of course! so my recommendation would be to inspect the page (with chrome dev tools) and see if it is styled as an H1, and if it isn't styled as a true H1, I would add that as a task to your backlog but I wouldn't suggest that you make it higher priority then other more important ranking factors. That being said, most of these SEO best practice recommendations come from people doing tests and identifying trends, so there is no 100% solid answer that "yes you NEED it to be styled as a true H1" or "no it does not matter at all".
My personal opinion is that it still carries some value, so if you can figure it out, I would recommend that you do have it read as a true H1 tag. Even if it does not impact your rankings significantly, I think that your site will be better off following all recommended best practices.
-
Thank you for the over and above response!
My quandry is that the text that is really the "H1" on each page is done in a certain styling on the web platform such that we can't control the text for it to be an H1. We can't choose it with a menu or do it on the back end through code and tagging. (Maybe we could if we really dig into it, not sure.)
The text is very clear on the page and functions exactly in the way I believe an H1 should function, clarifying what the page is about (similar to the page title but not always exactly that same words). We like the styling, and it's clear and visual. I was wondering if we should worry that tools like Moz Pro don't see it officially as an H1. It seems from most things I'm hearing is that it functions as an H1 already and we don't need to spend the time to get it to be stylized as official H1. That's why I was wondering exactly what H1s are for and why they are important. If it's for directing the viewer on the page, we've done that. If it's for something more that needs official H1 "status" we don't have that.
-
Thank you for the response! I really appreciate it.
-
Title Tags = Page Titles (if you're using a CMS, it is usually called page title, not title tag).Your title tag is the name that appears on your browser tab. This is one of the first places that search engine spiders crawl to see what a page is about. When it comes to SERP ranking, your title tag has far far more of an influence then the H1 does. In fact, so many people used to keyword stuff the H1 and use it for spam, that it no longer has much of impact at all, if any. The H1 of a page is now more intended for the user to get a clear idea of what they are about to read, as well as styling of your pages. Moz recommends the following format for your title tag: Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name. However, if your title tag doesn't match what content of the page is about, than you're spamming.
Here's an example: Let's say you have a page about why organic apples are the best, and you sell organic fruit and your brand name is organics (which is probably a real brand name but oh well, it's for this example). Your title tag (page title) could be this: Why Organic Apples Are Better - Premium Organic Fruit | Organics. But your H1 could be: "Why You Should Start Eating Organic Apples Only" or "Why You Should Avoid Non-Organic Apples" and it would be the first thing on-page.
-
Hi,
Main Differences:
Title Tags appear in search engines and the Web browser’s title bar
H1 Headers appear within the body text of the webpage
Search engines give more weight to Title Tags than H1 HeadersPlease check this old thread on similar query @ https://moz.com/community/q/can-h1-and-meta-title-be-exactly-the-same-why-not
Hope this helps.
Thanks
-
Hello,
I refer to this Moz article when writing Meta Title tags https://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag with the optimal format:
Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name
The H1 tag would look unnatural in the same format. Personally I use the H1 tag to focus on my primary keyword if the page is mostly focusing on the primary keyword. The H1 tag should provide a good user experience when a visitor lands on the page and give an indication of the content within. If you make it unreadable it will result in a bounce back to the SERP.
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
-
On-page SEO
This is a question for the organic SEO experts, once you added the main keyword that you want to rank for in the homepage title, meta title plus meta description, perhaps once or twice in the text on the homepage. How often do you then write it in the content marketing, say blog posts, we want to rank higher on Google for "SEO agencies Cardiff" however if you mention this in the blog posts too much say once a week, this could lead to over optimisation issues?
On-Page Optimization | | sarahwalsh1 -
Missing H1 headings
Hi,
On-Page Optimization | | Colin12
I have an enquiry in relation to missing H1 headings. I am getting a number of these errors reported for collection pages where I am using a full width banner image at the top of the page with no visible description underneath. In these circumstances is it advisable to somehow include a H1 heading or can I ignore it? https://osullivanspharmacy.ie/collections/deep-heat0 -
Page Title Length
Hi Gurus, I understand that it is a good practice is to use 50-60 characters for the a page title length. Google appends my brand name to the end of each title (15 characters including spaces) it index. Do I need to count what google adds as part of the maximum recommended length? i.e.
On-Page Optimization | | SunnyMay
is the maximum 50-60 characters + the 15 characters brand name Google adds to the end of the title or 50-60 including the addition? Many thanks!
Lev0 -
Multiple H1 tags on Squarespace blog page?
Hi All, I use Squarespace and while running my site (https://www.growmassagebusiness.com) through programs am seeing that my blog posts are being seen as one page with multiple H1 tags. I read through the SS help desk and found back in 2015 someone wrote that it's not a bit deal b/c of HTML5 and that the search engines will read each blog post as a sub-page. I'm not so sure about that and wondering what the experts think? If that is screwy then I'm considering possibly making each blog post it's own page rather than using their blog posting format.
On-Page Optimization | | rajam0 -
Home page and category page target same keyword
Hi there, Several of our websites have a common problem - our main target keyword for the homepage is also the name of a product category we have within the website. There are seemingly two solutions to this problem, both of which not ideal: Do not target the keyword with the homepage. However, the homepage has the most authority and is our best shot at getting ranked for the main keyword. Reword and "de-optimise" the category page, so it doesn't target the keyword. This doesn't work well from UX point of view as the category needs to describe what it is and enable visitors to navigate to it. Anybody else gone through a similar conundrum? How did you end up going about it? Thanks Julian
On-Page Optimization | | tprg0 -
Noindex child pages (whose content is included on parent pages)?
I'm sorry if there have been questions close to this before... I've using WordPress less like a blogging platform and more like a CMS for years now... For content management purposes we organize a lot of content around Parent/Child page (and custom-post-type) relationships; the Child pages are included as tabbed content on the Parent page. Should I be noindexing these child pages, since their content is already on the site, in full, on their Parent pages (ie. duplicate content)? Or does it not matter, since the crawlers may not go to all of the tabbed content? None of the pages have shown up in Moz's "High Priority Issues" as duplicate content but it still seems like I'm making the Parent pages suffer needlessly... Anything obvious I'm not taking into consideration? By the by, this is my first post here @ Moz, which I'm loving; this site and the forums are such a great resource! Anyways, thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | rsigg0 -
Creating New Pages Versus Improving Existing Pages
What are some things to consider or things to evaluate when deciding whether you should focus resources on creating new pages (to cover more related topics) versus improving existing pages (adding more useful information, etc.)?
On-Page Optimization | | SparkplugDigital0 -
Hiding Page Titles By Display None
Hi. I am new to this community, and new to SEO as well. A friend asked me to give them suggestions on onsite optimization for their Drupal website. I know page titles are very important, and usually they should be set to H1. (At least I think) This particular website has all their page titles set to H2 and they are using display:none in their stylesheet to hide them for graphic design reasons. What would be the most practical work around for this? We don't want this to appear sketchy in the eyes of the SE's, but putting page titles at the top of their pages really would take away from their graphical design. The second issue is that they use a module called Quicktabs for tabbed product specs on each page. Each tab is actually pulled from a post (called a node in Drupal), so each tab has it's own title that is an H2. So not only are they hiding the main page title, but they are hiding 5 others within the tabs, and their are 6 H2 elements showing up on each product page all set to display:none. Any creative suggestions? Hope that makes sense.... Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | aprilm-1890400