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.
Multiple H1s and Header Tags in Hero/Banner Images
-
I work on education websites, and our sites are being flagged by SEO and accessibility checkers for having multiple H1s.
The home pages have the site name as an h3 in the hero image, and an aspirational headline (think: Be Like Mike) as an H1. The sub-pages have two H1s: one on the site name in the banner image, and the other on the page title.
Note that the site name is very keyword-rich.
If we were to remove the H1 and H3 tags from the hero/banner images, would it do any SEO harm? At the same time, we’d rewrite the H1 on the home page to be more keyword-focused.
Any other options? I also read that it’s OK to have multiple H1s as long as it’s clear which H1 belongs to the heading area and which one belongs to the body area of the page.
Thanks in advance!
-
@uwpce one more thing to keep in mind - coherence of H1 with meta title and description tags. These two things are often disregarded by webmasters, but these are important to give Googlebot a better picture of what this page is about. So:
- one H1 tag
- this H1 tag corresponds to your meta title
- meta description is a keyword rich summary of the page that will help your CTR on Google.
- 20 days earlier
-
@uwpce you should re-decentralize H tags, use only 1 H1 tag, the rest you should adjust to H2, H3, H4 accordingly.
-
@seoelevated thank you!
-
While there is some level of uncertainty about the impact of multiple H1 tags, there are several issues about the structure you describe. On the "sub-pages", if you have an H1 tag on the site name, that means the same H1 tag is used on a bunch of pages. This is something you want to avoid. Instead, develop a strategy of which pages you would like to target to rank for which search queries, and then use the page's primary query in the H1 tag.
The other issue I see in your current structure is that it sounds like you have heading tags potentially out of sequence. Accessibility checker tools will flag this as an issue, and indeed it can cause frustration for people with vision disabilities accessing your pages with screen readers. You want to make sure that you preserve a hierarchy where an H1 is above the H2 is above the H3, etc.
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
-
H1 text and Header Image Overlap?
I have images with text at the top of every page on my site. But no H1 or H tags at all. I would like the text on the image to be my H1 text. But I don't want to be repetitive. What should I do?
On-Page Optimization | Sep 3, 2020, 3:41 AM | Calligraphy0 -
Moz bar not working on https://www.fitness-china.com/gym-equipment-names-pictures-prices
Moz bar not working on our website about gym equipment names https://www.fitness-china.com/gym-equipment-names-pictures-prices How long fix it?
On-Page Optimization | Oct 14, 2023, 3:17 PM | ahislop5740 -
H1 tag positioning impact
Hello, I am currently working with a dev team to develop a new site. We have designed the title tags to sit below a banner image on each page but the technical team are insisting the h1 title tags must come above the banner for maximum SEO impact. I am sceptical about this, can anybody please shed some light and/or share any up to date resource on this? I have attached a side by side wireframe to illustrate the pages with the h1 tags in both positions. Thank you! HnWcLTx
On-Page Optimization | Oct 30, 2018, 12:03 PM | Popidev0 -
Less Tags better for SEO?
I am currently reviewing my strategy when it comes to categories and tags on my site. Having been no-indexed for some time, and having many tags with just one entry I am thinking that this is not optimal for SEO purposes. This is what I am planning: Categories - Change these to Index, but only after adding a hundred words or so by way of introduction (see this example - https://www.besthostnews.com/news/hosting/a-small-orange-news/). With the categories I am thinking of highlighting key articles as well to improve link juice distribution to older articles that are important. Tags - About half my tags have only 1 entry, with a few more just having 2 entries. I am thinking of deleting all tags with just one entry, and trying to merge those with just two or 3 entries where it makes sense to do so. I will keep these as no-index, but I think this will mean more optimal distribution of link juice within the site. I would appreciate your thoughts \ suggestions on the best practices here.
On-Page Optimization | Apr 28, 2015, 7:57 AM | TheWebMastercom0 -
How important are image file names
Hi, How important do you think the image file names are for image search?
On-Page Optimization | Dec 18, 2013, 4:49 PM | jjtech
I know it used to be the best practice a while ago but is it still important? Thanks in advance, JJ0 -
Should I watermark my product images
I am in the process of creating new images for my products to use on my website. Are there any advantages or disadvantages of watermarking each image? Is there an SEO impact good or bad? I am aware that filename and Alt tags are important, but am unsure if google dislikes watermarked images.
On-Page Optimization | Oct 11, 2013, 7:02 AM | BipSum1 -
ALT tagging images with keyword. What is too much?
I was wondering about the best practices of ALT tags in images. Say if you have an eCommerce site and you're on a product page. This product page has 5 images of the same product (different images), should you give every image an Alt tag with the keyword for that page? Or, is that keyword stuffing, and it would actually be best practice be to provide alt tags on just one image?
On-Page Optimization | Jun 20, 2013, 1:40 PM | John_Francis0 -
Same H1 tag in header across entire site
Should I have the same H1 tag in my header through out my entire site? Or is this considered to be self canalization for my main keywords. For example right now I have an H1 tag with my main targeted keywords on every page on my site, even if the pages content doesn't necessarily match the keywords in the H1 tag.
On-Page Optimization | Nov 22, 2011, 2:26 PM | TRICORSystems0