What is an H1 tag and why is it important for SEO?

The H1 tag is a HTML element on a web page. H1 tags denote the most important text such as the title of the page.

In hypertext markup language (HTML), there are six heading levels.

They are defined with the <h1> to <h6> HTML tag.

H1 defines the most important heading and H6 defines the least important.

With AI search, structured data is more critical than ever.

Related: 7 practical ways to optimize for Agentic SEO, ChatGPT

Heading tags are used to structure content hierarchically. For example, the H1 should be used for the main heading, followed by the H2 tags, then H3, then H4-H6.

One of the best practices Google recommends is to use a heading structure in order of importance and not skip the order.

For example, use <h3> after <h2>, instead of after <h1>.

What is an H1 tag?

The h1 tag is a heading element that indicates the main topic of the page.

Most websites use a CMS that automatically marks up the blog post or page title as the h1 header. For this reason, the h1 tag is essentially the page title.

Heading optimization is an important part of on-page SEO. I have an SEO audit checklist that covers what SEO best practices to look out for.

Why are H1 tags important?

The H1 is the most important tag in the heading hierarchy and it gives search engines clues to the main topic of your page content.

For users, the H1 indicates what to expect for the rest of your content.

Search Engine Journal has written a timeline of how Google’s opinion has evolved over years about the use of H1 as an SEO factor for search engine rankings.

I think headings are an important SEO ranking factor and can affect how you appear on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

SEO Benefit

Search engine spiders use the H1 and other headings on the page to understand the structure of your content, and if your page is relevant to the search query.

Some SEO best practices to optimize headings with your target keywords:

• Add the main keyword in the h1 tag
• Add long-tail keywords and relevant keyword phrases in the other headings
• Write relevant content under each heading.

The best way is to optimize your headings is to think about your readers first and the user intent.

Create headings in a natural way that represent sub-topics of your content but don’t approach it with keyword stuffing.

The h1 is the most prominent heading with the most on-page SEO weight, so it would have the largest text with the most important keyword phrase.

Keyword research would be an important part of your content strategy and will help you when optimizing for headings.

I like to just draft the page content first and write naturally to answer user intent. Then, add headings that make sense.

With blog posts, I would usually have h2 tags and h3 tags in the main body content.

For longer blog posts that have more sub-sections, I may add h4 tags too. Logically, these headings would introduce a sub-topic and I would try to add a long-tail keyword.

I rarely need to use h6 tags.

In Google’s developer styling guide, they recommended creating headings with associated content. So I would avoid creating empty headings without any content underneath it.

User experience

Headings are a great way to help users skim the page’s content and improve the user experience.

For long-form content, headings break up large chunks of text and make it easier to skim and read the content of the page. This improves the reading experience and keeps users on your page longer.

In terms of styling, the headings generally have different font sizes.

H1 generally has a larger font size and is bolded. It is at the top of the page drawing the reader’s attention and stands out as the main topic of the page.

The rest of the h tags from h2-h6 have their default font sizes and should be smaller as we go down the heading levels.

It is important to distinguish the formatting of h1 from the other headings. As Google looks into heading elements and “Other content that’s large and prominent through the use of style treatments” to generate the title on the search results.

Should you have more than one H1 tag?

No, you should not. While Google’s John Mueller said that it doesn’t matter if you have one h1 or five H1 headings.

However, for SEO purposes and to help Google generate title links, it is best to have only one unique h1 heading. As seen here from the official Google documentation:

On WordPress, the page title is used for the h1 header by default.

So if there are other important elements you want to mark up with headings, I would just use the h2 and avoid having multiple h1 heading tags.

Because Google uses the h1 to generate title links that appear on the search results.

Having multiple h1 tags and duplicate h1 tags can be confusing. It could affect how your title links are generated on the search results and affect organic traffic.

So it is best to just have one single h1 tag.

In terms of technical SEO, this is an easy fix.

You can use an SEO tool such as Screaming Frog to crawl your entire website and find any duplicate or multiple h1 header tags.

Differences between page title vs H1 tag

Are page titles and h1 tag the same?

In terms of HTML language, they are different. The title has its own title tag and the h1 element has its own h1 tag.

In the source code, you can check the HTML elements on your web page.

But because Google uses the h1 tag to generate title links on the search result pages, the h1 tag is essentially the same as the page title.

They are just displayed in different ways.

On search results, the title is the plain blue link. The h1 is the visible heading on the page itself.

How important are H1 tags as a ranking factor for SEO?

On-page elements are important for SEO. We know that search engine crawlers look to the HTML structural elements, keyword phrases, context of the page to rank pages on the search engine results pages.

H1 and the other heading tags have ranking weight. Google looks into the keywords used in the headings, how it is formatted and the content around it to determine relevance.

But there are more ranking factors than before. It is not enough to optimize the h1 tags and expect to rank at the top of SERPs. We have to look into content quality, site speed and backlinks too.