When it comes to optimising the pages on your website for the best performance in organic search, from a content and technical perspective, it’s easy to get bogged down in all the different things you should and shouldn’t be doing. It’s suggested that Google considers over 200 different factors in deciding where to rank a web page, but trying to understand and satisfy all of these criteria is difficult/impossible, and more importantly, unnecessary.
If there are 200 factors that determine rankings, a small number of these are much more important than the rest, and focusing on these is the better, not to mention less stressful, way of optimising the content of your site. One of these important considerations is the H1 tag, sometimes referred to as the page title. But, even with this optimisation factor which most agree the search engines consider important, there is still some confusion – how many H1 tags should you have on your page?
What is an H1 Tag?
So what are H1 tags, anyway? The H in H1 stands for ‘heading’ and the H1 tag is the HTML code that typically denotes the main heading of the webpage. Of all the HTML header tags, H1 tags have taken on significant importance for SEO as, usually being the main heading, they provide the search engines with a key indication of what the entire webpage is about; and therefore in which search results, as well as how high up in those results, the page should rank on the search engines results page.
As well as this main H1 title, properly formatted webpages are also likely to have a hierarchy of subheadings for the rest of the content, and these additional heading tags are usually designated H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6, depending on their position and importance to this hierarchy. You can see an example of this typically structured hierarchy below.
With regards to your SEO efforts, these H tags can help to focus on areas of the content to be optimised, but it’s important to remember they are tags for the HTML code, and better optimisation could come from considering the content itself and how it’s structured, as we’ll look at.
How Many H1 Tags on a Page for SEO?
Ideally, your web page should have just one H1 title tag, and it should certainly have one clear, obvious title for the page that search engines can understand. Additional H1 tag headings could be changed to H2, H3, etc. or styled appropriately without using H tags.
With the SEO significance H1 tags have assumed, how many you can have on a page has become a common question, and while we’ve outlined our view above, opinions on the answer to this vary. Google themselves have said multiple H1 tags on a page are completely fine, while most SEO experts would argue that you should only ever have one H1 tag, and this should probably be the main page title (not to be confused with the title tag) as well.
While you could probably argue both views are correct, we think it’s important to think less about the H1 tag specifically, and more about what the H1 tag is meant to denote – i.e. the main title, and therefore topic, of your page’s content. To explain this better, a short history lesson might be useful.
H1 Tags & SEO
Going back a few years, Google’s algorithm probably wasn’t as sophisticated as it is today. The layout of most websites and webpages was probably more traditional (in terms of using a proper H tag heading hierarchy), too. So the H1 tag would provide Google with a useful piece of information about the main topic of a page and which search rankings it would be relevant for.
These days, with a much more sophisticated algorithm, Google can probably discern the main title of the page whether or not it has an H1 tag, and has said as much, and use this information to help make ranking decisions. This implies less reliance on the H1 tag itself as a factor in ranking, and more importance placed on the first/main heading of the page. In most cases they are likely to be the same, and tell Google ‘this is what my page is about’, but it is this main page or blog post title, and its optimisation, that provides that focus.
Can You Have Multiple H1 Tags on a Page
Circling back to the original question, when you consider the above, it makes sense that simply having multiple H1 tags wouldn’t be an issue, but you would only want to have one, clear title for the page, optimised for your target keyword, in order to provide the most benefit from an SEO perspective. The rest of your subheadings could all be H1 tags as well, but doing this just because of the perceived benefit of them having an H1 tag, isn’t likely to provide much additional benefit.
It could even be argued that utilising the typical, and more structured, H1, H2, H3, etc. hierarchy is going to provide better comprehension for the algorithm and your readers, and deliver better optimisation for rankings, and conversions for your website.
Are H1 Tags Still Important?
When used for the main heading of a page, undoubtedly, and where the H1 tag may be even more important is when it comes to optimisation might be in situations where your main page title isn’t the first H tag on the page, as in the example below.
This could help the search engines better identify what you consider to be the main heading of your page, even if it isn’t the first heading the algorithms come across.
Other Considerations
One important aspect of H1 tags that is also worth considering is their role in improving the accessibility of webpages, H1 tags can play a vital role in helping more people access and understand these pages – screen readers can utilise the H1 tag to provide the screen reader users with the information they need to understand the topic and content of the page.
Multiple H1 Tags or Not?
Are multiple H1 tags on a page a good idea for SEO then? Probably not, but that’s not to say they would always be detrimental. It’s more a question of having a specific and focused main page title, with a structured hierarchy of related and optimised subheadings.
Basically, don’t think of the H1 tag as important just because it’s the H1 tag, the H1 tag is important because it more often than not denotes the main title (and topic) of the page – a well-optimised main title is what’s important and what you should probably focus on.
If you’re convinced of the potential of having fully-optimised content on your website and need assistance to make this happen, just complete the callback request form below and we’ll get in touch to discuss how we can help.