The importance of the H1 tag

Does the use of a H1 still benefits your site?

[Hercules2]

I doubt if the use of the H1 tag is still working to get get higher listings. I think it even may hurt your listings.

[Hercules2]

Thanx for your great responses it helped me a lot on this topic. Really very good responses evrybody!
I now think my sites have triggered some signals that an seo'er has made the pages.

If google has a team working wich tries to filter out seo pages.

The next questions that pops in my head is:
1. Isn't 70% (or more) of the h1 tags that is used on the internet today produced with SEO tactics in mind?

2.If a site has triggered signals or flags from google with overoptimastion the url bookmarked 'forever' as a 'seo' site? (mabey this is something for another topic)

If question 2 is yes then a lost of people including me have a big problem.

possible solution: only produce pages with title and text and make it spiderable and produce a natural linkstructure

Looking forward to read your opinions on these matters!

[henweb]

>>I now think my sites have triggered some signals that an seo'er has made the pages.

Since when have google been targeting pages which have had input from SEO people in them?!? Maybe blackhat SEO techniques, but whitehat techniques are ideally not even noticable, so how google would target them I've no idea...?

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Isn't 70% (or more) of the h1 tags that is used on the internet today produced with SEO tactics in mind?

This is probably a fair assumption but bear in mind that Google tells us to do stuff like, "Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it."

This is not seen as black hat at this level.

If a site has triggered signals or flags from google with overoptimastion the url bookmarked 'forever' as a 'seo' site?

Don't take this as gospel but I don't think so. It's the algo which determines a site's placement dependent on what it finds on that site. If it finds something different it may change its opinion.

[trillianjedi]

Isn't 70% (or more) of the h1 tags that is used on the internet today produced with SEO tactics in mind?

I think you've missed the point. Google will never penalise a page for using an H1 tag, in isolation of other factors.

It's part of the HTML markup. Look at all the ultra high quality university pages that use H tags.

It's combinations of factors that would trigger a penalty or wave a flag, if any.

TJ

[LostOne]

"After all, if used without CSS, it makes the page incredibly ugly"

I don't understand that comment. I use H1 tags with FP but don't like the size of the font, so I change it to look more appealing. The same is true with H2 and so on. Is that what we're referring to as ugly?

[Hercules2]

Thank you very much for these helpfull comments.

I used alt tags with keywords, internal and external links with keyowrds, long text with keywords (5% keyworddensity), H1 with keywords, title with keywords. This is to much i'm afraid. i'm gonna kick out the alt tags and the h1 i think.

[henweb]

I assume when you say "kick out" you mean just the keywords, not the whole H1 and alt tag thing - surely you're going to degrade your user experience if you do this?

[Patrick Taylor]

I use alt tags with keywords, internal and external links with keywords, long text with keywords, H1 with keywords, title with keywords.

Me too. Nothing wrong with that. And I use H2, H3, H4, and H5 with keywords, because the keywords are relevant to the content. So long as a heading is used as a heading and is appropriate to the content, this would be a correct use of headings.

[europeforvisitors]

I used alt tags with keywords, internal and external links with keyowrds, long text with keywords (5% keyworddensity), H1 with keywords, title with keywords. This is to much i'm afraid.

If I were in charge of Google Search, I'd be more suspicious of keyword-crammed alt text than legitimate h1 headings. (After all, alt text is supposed to be there for users of text browsers and screen readers--e.g., blind people who must get awfully tired of hearing their screen readers recite lists of keywords wherever an image appears on the page.)

Note that I said "legitimate h1 headings." A heading (or a page title, for that matter) that reads like a list of keywords is--or should be--an invitation to anything from a search engine's slap on the wrist to a whack upside the head.

[Hercules2]

I didn't got al the variables crammed with keywords but i still got page 3 rankings on average (dutch language so this is not spectacular) I will get rid of the h1 and alt text completely and i will post the results on webmasterworld. (you deserve the results after this helpfull discussion)

my quess is that if an alt tag and h1 tag and title contain more or less the same content that this is to much.

I got a client of mine wich put online small text per keyword and only a good internal linkstructure (keywords in links) and he is doing very well. even without a good title (all the same)no h1 or alt tag. (and these are competive keywords on a subject related to money)

I'm going to do a trip to iprospect.com boston us in 2 weeks to do an seo course so it can take a month or so before i will post the resultst here

Thanx again for your help

[steveb]

"This is to much i'm afraid."

Too much of what? A good user experience and well-designed website?

Eliminating any of these is just foolish, assuming they are being used properly, like the alt text actually applies to the page or the image and isn't stuffed with crap.

[Hercules2]

the alt tag h1 and title all reflect to the content on the page.

i will keep in the title, good internal link structure and the text.

[Bard]

The <h1> tag was certainly created as part of a standard you can not be penalized for implementing that standard. But over manipulation could be cause to disregard your entire websites's <h1> tags. I'm ceratin that at some point you must consider search engines either include or exclude standards based on proper use or algo.. but they do not penalize for a standard implementation of html.

[Rollo]

I think h1 tags are a good thing, when they acurately reflect the content of the page and contain only a few words. Nothing more manipulative about that than a title in large letters that preceeds an article in a magazine. Standard, historically, and usefull to readers to boot.

[g1smd]

There is a very easy way to check your usage of heading tags. Run the pages through [validator.w3.org...] making sure that you tick the box for "show outline".

On the results page, scroll right to the bottom of the page and inspect the "outline" section. If the bullet-point list, found there, does not look like a summary of your document, then you are abusing the heading tags.

<pedant> There is no such thing as an <alt> tag, as it is an attribute.</pedant>

[Patrick Taylor]

g1smd - thanks... a useful pointer.

Viewing one's page with styles disabled can be instructive too.

[Kirby]

>alt tag

Use it for what it was designed for - describing the image. Think in terms of a text reader. If its good for that visitor, Google wont have a problem with it.

You can't use Google to make money.

Sorry MB, but this made me laugh. Guess I better send back my Adsense checks. ;)

[martinibuster]

Haha. :p
Should be amended to, Google Search.
But I know what you mean.

[hercules]

H1 are still ok but less important