What is a H1 Heading?
The H1 heading is used to mark up your webpage title and is essential for SEO in Adelaide. Web developers use CSS to make the H1 stand out on the page compared to other headings like H2 and H3. The H1 is essential since it helps your audience decide whether or not to continue reading your content. Search engines also rely on the H1 heading to determine the relevance of your content. This blog discusses everything about the H1 heading and how you should use it to improve your webpage.
Can Using Many H1 Tags Hurt Your SEO?
One question that has bugged SEO experts for a long time is whether having multiple H1 tags can affect page ranking. Fortunately, John Muller from Google gave an official answer to help eliminate speculation. John Muller stated that many websites do not have structured headings. However, the content on these websites is essential, and Google will not de-rank a website based on improper formatting. Multiple H1 tags will not affect your SEO if the headings are helpful and relevant to the content. However, Muller insisted on focusing on the user and making their on-site experience as positive as possible.
How Many H1 Tags Are Ideal for SEO?
According to Muller, the best thing is to think about the user experience. If your H1 tags fail to match your audience’s expectations or do not offer an excellent on-site experience, you may be doing it wrong, and the H1s will not make sense to search engines. Google does not set hard rules about how many H1 tags to use on your web pages. However, it is recommended to use one H1 heading to describe the page’s topics. You can use H2s on sub-headings and H3s on separate issues within those subheadings.
Sometimes, your content may cover many topics and require many H1 headings. In this case, you can rethink your webpage’s structure. Ensure those H1 tags illustrate the topics covered on your webpage and reflect the important content. Your readers should know that the topic changes when they see a new H1 on the page.
Benefits of Using H1 Tags
1. Help Google Understand Your Content: Using H1 tags as recommended tells Google and other search engines what your web page is about.
2. Improve User Experience: H1 headings play an essential role in your webpage’s hierarchical structure. The H1 is the most prominent heading on your webpage. Failing to include H1 tags on your website makes it challenging for readers to skim through your content and digest the information.
3. Improve Accessibility: Visually-impaired people use screen readers to convert text and images to audio. Most of these readers prefer only one H1 tag for the page title.
How Should You Use H1 Headings?
While the following points are the best H1 tag SEO, breaking them will not hurt your SEO and will not lead to a Google penalty. Google focuses on understanding, indexing, and ranking your content. However, Google can’t do these tasks without techniques for non-ideal situations like pages without H1 tags. As such, following these best practices for H1 tags is ideal.
1. Use H1 Tags for Page Titles
The best place to place your title is in a prominent spot above your article. Most website platforms and CMS will automatically do this for you. However, certain themes may override these settings. Fortunately, you can check whether your tile has the <h1> tag. Right-click in your browser and select “Inspect.” The highlighted part should include <h1>, wrapped in an H1 tag.
2. Use Title Case for H1 Headings
The title case involves capitalising all words with four or more letters. Using a title case for your H1 will keep your content neat in the search results. Ensure you match your title tag with your H1. Most CMS will do this automatically, but some plugins can set the title tag as something else. The primary reason to set the title tag to something different is when the page title is perfect for an H1 but too long for a title tag. The title and H1 can be slightly different, but they are cast from the same mould. However, you must align everything if the title differs dramatically from the H1. Remember, most users visit your webpage after reading the title tag in the SERPs. As such, they may feel duped and leave your page if the title tag (H1) is different and unrelated to your content.
3. Use H1 Headings on Every Vital Page
Your page title should be wrapped in an H1 tag. As such, you should use an H1 tag on every vital webpage. However, use only one H1 per page since some browsers may have challenges rendering things correctly without explicit CSS rules. Although using multiple H1 tags will not affect your SEO, it is best practice to use one H1 heading.
Conclusion
Every webpage should have an H1 heading describing the content you will share. Headings are not chosen for appearance but for what makes sense in the context.