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.
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.
-
Thank you for the responses!
The reason why I thought it may be effective is because I had seen it done on a few sites. Specifically when a CMS is used to manage the sites content. If you place a h1 tag into your header file it's going to care through every page of the site.
I will definitly be changing that strategy ASAP!
Thanks for the help.
-
Just in case you don't already have enough feedback: No, don't do it! The h1 is not the most powerful onpage element .. I think the title tag gets that award -- but it can be a useful factor. It should be written for the user - think newspaper headlines!
And just as each page should have distinct content, and a distinct tile, meta description, etc, so it should have a distinct, effective, h1 tag.
-
Hi Brandon,
I would only use keywords relevant to the page in the H1 tag. The reasons for this are that it is
a) not very descriptive for the end user if all the pages have the same H1 text regardless of page content (unless the text is hidden) and
b) it will have an impact on your other keyword rankings as you could make better use of the H1 tag to contain keywords which ARE relavant to the page.
The general rule of thumb is that each page should target only 1 or 2 unique, specific keywords or phrases, meaning that all of the on-page optimisation should incorporate these into the various tags and elements, such as the H1.
I don't think Google would give you a massive penalty for this but I know that you could target your keywords much more effectively by not duplicating your H1s across each page.
Hope that helps
-
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.
Most likely, you will be able to improve the search engine traffic of most pages by making the H1 text match the topic of your PAGE.
-
Absolutely a bad idea. You should be using that h1 tag to promote the current page only, not the same keywords over and over.
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
-
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 -
Do WooCommerce product tags effect SEO?
I'm just curious if I need these product tags and if they impact in any way at all SEO? - whether that be positively or negatively. on1iRin
On-Page Optimization | | xdunningx0 -
Word Count - Content site vs ecommerce site
Hi there, what are your thoughts on word count for a content site vs. an ecommerce site. A lot of content sites have no problem pushing out 500+ words per page, which for me is a decent amount to help you get traction. However on ecommerce sites, a lot of the time the product description only needs to be sub-100 words and the total word count on the page comes in at under 300 words, a lot of that could be considered duplicate. So what are your views? Do ecommerce sites still need to have a high word count on the product description page to rank better?
On-Page Optimization | | Bee1590 -
On Site Question: Duplicate H2...
Hi All A few on-site audit tools pull information on duplicate H2 tags on pages. This implies it's a bad thing and should be fixed - is that the case? On one of my sites the tag-line is in H2 in the header, so appears on every page... Just wondering if this is something worth fixing. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | GTAMP0 -
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 | | John_Francis0 -
Are H1 tags important or influential?
We are in the process of correcting our site in hopes that Google will rank us higher in the SERP. We have many pages that have multiple H1 tags or no H1 tag at all. How important is the H1 tag? Will it help us increase our ranking on Google? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | WebRiverGroup0 -
Rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on?
Very simple, Why would a website (and I have seen tons doing this) link the rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on? Example: somepage.htm has a canonical tag linking to somepage.htm I thought the idea of this tag was to tell google if 2 pages are similar, this page is the original, and it's this page which should be indexed and the page with the tag on should pass all PR to the original. Maybe im wrong and someone can help me out to understand this.
On-Page Optimization | | activitysuper0 -
Title and Heading Tags
Firstly I would like to comment on how helpful this site is. I haven't posted much before but have been reading tonnes of answers for many months now and have been finding it really useful. I used the SEOmoz scanner and the main problem highlighted was duplicate content so I started to add 'customer product reviews' I had received and unique 'further information' to each page (hopefully this was the right thing to do to solve duplicate content! : ) ) Then I looked at heading and title tags. Currently I set title tags for each product page to be "Brand Name- Product Name" but after doing some research we are thinking of putting Keyword Description of Product | Product Name | Brand Name (around 60 characters long). So is this the advised thing to do and create unique titles that are relevant to each specific product page for over 200 pages we have? In addition, any advice on setting optimum tags would be great. We keep reading varying tips online. I gather ideally h1 needs to be a shorter keyword rich version of the title tag? Many Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | jannkuzel0