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.
How will it effect SEO to have multiple h1 tags on a page?
-
I have a client who recieved this advice from his marketing consultant: "If there are multiple h1 tags on a page, this can confuse Google and it may have a negative impact on the keyword rankings. If you could ask your web developer to go in and remove the h1 tags on the header images that would be helpful. This way it will be easier for Google to index your site and will help your keyword rankings."
How will it effect SEO to have multiple h1 tags on a page?
-
This was a question that was recently raised by somebody else here on the Q&A and you can see the full discussion here. Although the question is slightly different, the answer is the same: it depends which HTML version you are using. If it's HTML4 or XHTML, only use one h1 per page, but if you are using HTML5 you can have one per section. So you could have one in your
<nav>, on in your, one in each of the
<aside>s on your page and one in your
<footer>.
The reason for this is that for HTML4 search engines look at headings to give the page hierachy - remember they only had
s to separate content areas - but HTML5 uses the new semantic elements like
<header>and <fotter>to work out hierarchy, with headings only affecting hierachy within one of those tags.</fotter></header>
</footer>
</aside>
</nav>
-
Sorry, but have to disagree a bit as having multiple H1's isn't the issue that most think it is, or once was. One of my own sites has 20 H1 tags (purely by chance as it is a single page design, but it's a long story), and that site ranks top 3 for a number of highly competitive phrases with almost half a billion results.
No, it isn't best practice and I wouldn't advocate doing this, but it isn't a major ranking factor.
-Andy
-
Your header images should not have h1 tags in them as well because then every page is going to have the same h1 tag with the same keyword - making it so that your are optimizing against that keyword on all your other pages.
-
Well said iSTORM! To add using images in H1 tags is not very search engine friendly or natural approach. H1 tags are to be used for text only, so adding images may not work to your advantage.
-
Google looks at h1 tags as clues to what the page's content is about. If you have multiple h1 tags with different keywords then it is difficult for Google to contextualize the page.
Best practice: one h1 tag with the keyword or theme you are trying to optimize for.
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
-
Shifting target keyword to a new page, how do we rank the internal page?
I have been targeting one keyword for home page that was ranking between the postilion 6-7 but was never ranking on 1st as there were 2 highly competitive keywords targeted on the same page, I changed the keyword to an internal service page to rank it on 1st, I have optimized the content as well but the home page is still ranking on 11th, how do I get the internal page rank on that keyword
On-Page Optimization | | GOMO-Gabriel0 -
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?
On-Page Optimization | | amybethmegjo1 -
Getting the Titles and Headings Right on Product Pages. Userbility vs SEO
Hey Mozzers, I am optimising a chaotic section of the site including many similar products. Writing unique content etc. The titles and urls were all over the place so my first job was to tidy them up so I could make some sense of the situation, especially as sometimes they didn't even match! I should point out were on Magento, so product name = Both the Heading and Title of the page, the meta title can be set separately. When i refer to title I mean both <title>and <h1></strong><br /><br />Before they existed as such<br />URL: domain.com/200-x-0-5-g-rs-232-balance.html<br />TItle: PC-1234 200 x 0.5g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br /><br />This format was (Product Code, Capacities, Resolutions, Accuracy, Product Title)<br /><br />The issue was all 60 products in a page followed this format. Navigating through the page was a nightmare and was just a jumble of numbers and highly confusing even to me who learnt what they all mean, especially when you had 8 products from the same range you got presented with<br /><br />APC-1234 200 x 0.5g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1235 500 x 1g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1236 1000 x 2g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1238 5000 x 10g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1239 10000 x 15g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1210 20000 x 25g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance<br />APC-1211 50000 x 50g x 0.3 RS-232 Balance</p> <p>I changed them to something more user friendly.<br /><br />URL: domain.com/200g-precision-balance.html<br />Title: 200g Precision Balance<br /><br />This has seen the following benefits<br />- URL is now clear and means something to the user<br />- Product titles are easy to navigate and the page is more pleasing to the eye<br />- The jumble of numbers in the title are now all labelled and shown below each product listing in bullet point so the user can see the basic spec of a product without having to decipher any titles<br /><br />Upon reflection I has a couple of concerns I was hoping you could discuss, I am wondering if I have made the titles too simple.<br />1) I have no product code in the title<br />We have our own products manufactured and sell existing brands with their own product codes. Some of these can be lengthy. Adding them makes them hard to the eye and the page looked cramped.<br /><br />The codes are listed beneath each product title on category pages and on a list on the actual product page, but no where in the titles. <br /><br />2)None of our products have a brand listed in the title<br />None of the products on the site had brand names in anything but the images when i started and as such it snuck under my radar. But should i pre-fix all titles with a brand name?<br /><br />Should </p> <p>URL: domain.com/200g-precision-balance.html<br />Title: 200g Precision Balance</p> <p>become</p> <p>URL: domain.com/BRAND1-200g-precision-balance.html<br />Title: BRAND1 200g Precision Balance<br /><br />My instinct tells me to change things to include brands as its useful to the customer and should have an SEO benefit, but to leave out product codes as they are accessible to the customer where they are now and dont make things messy and unreadable.<br /><br />As always, thanks for the input!</p></title>
On-Page Optimization | | ATP0 -
SEO can id and class be used in H1?
Can ID and class be used in my H1 tag. I realize best case would be to change it, but it's going to require a change order from the ecommerce company to fix their sloppy code. Will this hurt seo? Example:
On-Page Optimization | | K-WINTER0 -
Address on Every page of the website for Local SEO? Good or Bad?
Is this good idea to add business address on every page of the website?, How Google see this? and This is Good or bad for ranking?
On-Page Optimization | | Dan_Brown10 -
Do alt tags count towards on page keyword density?
Hello...I have written a bunch of content for my site using a useful tool called Scribe SEO which recommends keyword density at 5% if I remember correctly. So all my my newly written content is below this level but I am left wondering if by adding alt tags with my chosen keywords I will be considered to be over the limit and cause a red flag? Can anyone clarify this for me please?
On-Page Optimization | | Wallander0 -
Missing meta descriptions on indexed pages, portfolio, tags, author and archive pages. I am using SEO all in one, any advice?
I am having a few problems that I can't seem to work out.....I am fairly new to this and can't seem to work out the following: Any help would be greatly appreciated 🙂 1. I am missing alot of meta description tags. I have installed "All in One SEO" but there seems to be no options to add meta descriptions in portfolio posts. I have also written meta descriptions for 'tags' and whilst I can see them in WP they don't seem to be activated. 2. The blog has pages indexed by WP- called Part 2 (/page/2), Part 3 (/page/3) etc. How do I solve this issue of meta descriptions and indexed pages? 3. There is also a page for myself, the author, that has multiple indexes for all the blog posts I have written, and I can't edit these archives to add meta descriptions. This also applies to the month archives for the blog. 4. Also, SEOmoz tells me that I have too many links on my blog page (also indexed) and their consequent tags. This also applies to the author pages (myself ). How do I fix this? Thanks for your help 🙂 Regards Nadia
On-Page Optimization | | PHDAustralia680 -
Tag clouds: good for internal linking and increase of keyword relevant pages?
As Matt Cutts explained, tag clouds are OK if you're not engaged in keyword stuffing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYPX_ZmhLqg) - i.e. if you're not putting in 500 tags. I'm currently creating tags for an online-bookseller; just like Amazon this e-commerce-site has potentially a couple of million books. Tag clouds will be added to each book detail page in order to enrich each of these pages with relevant keywords both for search engines and users (get a quick overview over the main topics of the book; navigate the site and find other books associated with each tag). Each of these book-specific tag clouds will hold up to 50 tags max, typically rather in the range of up to 10-20. From an SEO perspective, my question is twofold: 1. Does the site benefit from these tag clouds by improving the internal linking structure? 2. Does the site benefit from creating lots of additional tag-specific-pages (up to 200k different tags) or can these pages become a problem, as they don't contain a lot of rich content as such but rather lists of books associated with each tag? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | semantopic0