Header Tags and the best way to use them

[JesterMagic]

My Site is over 15 years old and our use of header tags has remained fairly constant. The header tags are structured well (like a tree). With the recent Google Algo changes I am wondering if I need to update the use of our header tags (<h1>, <h2>, etc..). This change will require coding updates and template changes so it will take a bit of time so I want to get some opinions on if it is worth it from a SEO perspective.

Currently our header of the page contains the H1 tag for all pages. This is the name of the site and does not change on any page. (this is what I want to change but more on that later)

H2 tags are then used for title of the article on the page. Any sub headings in the article then use H3, etc...

For Topic pages that list articles with summaries, H2 tags are used for each article title.

H2 tags are also used in the left column of the website for the title of the different modules that appear there.

This setup has worked well for us over the years but I never did like the Name of the Site always being the H1 tag.

Questions

1) My main question is, is it worth me dropping the H1 tag from the title and then using the H1 tag for the single page article title - and then for the topic pages allow the topic title to be the H1 tag and the article summaries use the h2 tag for the titles? This way the H1 tag contains more valuable information on what the page is ultimately about.

2) I always thought that you should only have 1 H1 tag per page, is this what most people follow still? Most of my competitors do but some has 2 and others have none. I also found this older video by Matt at Google saying more that 1 is okay in some cases: [youtube.com ]

3) Most of our topics (which lists articles) have multiple pages. Currently the topic title is the same for each page. My feeling is to keep this the same or should I append a "Page X" text for pages 2 and up to make them somewhat unique?

[keyplyr]

Currently our header of the page contains the H1 tag for all pages. This is the name of the site and does not change on any page. (this is what I want to change but more on that later)

In all respect, you are misusing the H1 tag.

The H1 tag is a page level declaration, not a site level tag. If you choose to use the H1 (H tags do not have the same weight as they once did) then it is intended to declare the page topic (not the site name.)

The H2, H3, etc are then used in a hierarchical manner to declare sub topic, lesser topics, etc.

[w3schools.com...]

[JesterMagic]

In all respect, you are misusing the H1 tag

That is what I figured... means I have some work ahead of me then.

I guess multiple H1's are okay (see [seroundtable.com ] but I only plan to use 1 a page to get the most value out of it.

[keyplyr]

Google doesn't seem to have a problem with more than one H1 on a page, however Bing doesn't like it.

[tangor]

Bing has no problem if the h1 is correctly used (page, section, caption).

There is only one h1 of any real consequence. This is usually the SEMANTIC TITLE of the article/document, not to be confused with the <title> attribute.

That said, any ranking./seo value for h1x tags disappeared years ago because of webmaster abuse and poorly thought-out lazy reliance as type face formatting by designers.

Instead of correcting old pages all at once just make sure all new pages are done properly.

[NickMNS]

Keyplyr is absolutely right, you are misusing the H1 tag but the bad news is that fixing it probably wont make a difference. A similar question was asked on the Webmaster central Google hangout on Friday. John Muller (Google) said that they use the tags, but don't rely on them, so if they are misused, they are pretty good at picking on other clues. Some thing like tangor describes. They will simply pull the title of the article (not title tag).

Fixing this will not hurt, but I doubt it will have any impact. Tangor's suggestion is good:

just make sure all new pages are done properly.

[tangor]

On the quick change from h1 used as the site name:

Many good text editors can globally search/replace <h1> to <p class="logo">. Style that as you wish. Replace </h1> with </p> and you've quickly corrected one major error on the site.

You don't have to have an h1, but an h1 used improperly is not a good sign of quality coding.

[piatkow]

If you read through the various threads here it is obvious that there is no single "silver bullet" factor that will make your site jump up the listings, or fall down them if igored. Just lots of things, including well formatted headers, good inbound links etc, that will combine to affect your site's ranking. Don't obsess about any single one but view each new or edited page in a holistic manner to ensure that it covers as many as possible.

[Travis]

[developer.mozilla.org...]

[JesterMagic]

Thanks for all the replies. I am using a CMS and the issue is a combination of a theme issue (along with the modules, plugins) and some code that assumes that the h1 tag is always in the header. So a simple cut and paste will not cut it to fix the entire site. I have started fixing this behind the scenes and hope to roll out the changes soon. I don't expect any miracle SEO bump or anything but at least it will be fixed.

By the way I notice the page [developer.mozilla.org ] suggests putting the h1 tag in the header element of the body. I see most sites do not do this and is not really possible for me to do this either...

[Wilburforce]

By the way I notice the page [developer.mozilla.org ] suggests putting the h1 tag in the header element of the body.

Header is a Semantic Element (see [w3schools.com ]) in HTML5.

H1 - H6, which are hierarchical, can be used with or without HTML5 semantic markup, but also have a semantic function (see [w3.org ], as well as the W3C schools link in keyplyr's post), and are in my view much more important for both users and SEs than the new Semantic Elements: H1 is necessary, but Header isn't. H1 can go inside a Header element, but it doesn't have to.

H1 used to be important for SEO, and while it is probably a lot less significant now, headings still can (and if used corrrectly should) help search engines capture the subject and meaning of a page. They address what a page and its sections are about. While "keywords" may not be what they once were, it is still good practice to make it as clear as possible that a page about dog-grooming (H1) is about dog-grooming, that the first part (H2) is about dog-grooming techniques, the second (H2) about dog-grooming equipment, and the third (H2) about whatever else. If any of those parts have subsections, then use H3, etc. Although H6 is probably going further than you need, at least H1- H3 or H4 are pretty useful.

Header, Article, Section, etc. don't tell SEs what a section is about, but what its function is: <article> means "this is an article", <header> means "this section contains summary and navigatiion information", while <h1> means "this is the page topic".

Keep these distinctions in mind and you won't go far wrong.

[seoskunk]

The biggest myth in SEO - H1

Google do and always have treated header tags with the same emphasis as bold.

[tangor]

Not to put too fine a point on things, h1 is valid in a section or caption for the same reason given above: it is relevant as the title of that semantic element.

[Wilburforce]

@seoskunk

"The last time I tested (a year back or so) I found no boost from text in an <h3> tag, but some in an <h2> and more in an <h1>. I've heard from people who test more obsessively than I do, that the weighting for <h2> seems to fluctuate from no apparent boost to a significant help." - Tedster, 2003 ([webmasterworld.com ])

I agree that using H1 to weight text (rather than using it semantically in context) is useless, and may even be worse than useless. However, all else being equal the page that uses markup correctly will do better than one that doesn't, and I wouldn't put my money on one that uses <b> where it should have used <h1>, or vice versa. They are not equivalent, and I have never previously heard that Google weights them identically. What is your information source?

For anyone else who is interested, there have been a lot of discussions on both H1-H6 and HTML5 Semantic Elements over the years, but one I remember which expands marginally on their repsective roles was in 2016: [webmasterworld.com ].

[piatkow]

The biggest myth in SEO - H1

Google do and always have treated header tags with the same emphasis as bold.

Always? Many years ago as a novice webmaster I gave an important page an H2 for styling reasons (the first tutorial I had used hadn't mentioned CSS) and it was coming up far lower in very precise long tail searches that should have been the case. Then I discovered CSS and made the header H1 - magic, those long tail searches were popping up just where you would expect from their relevance to the page content.

As I said earlier, G have gradually eliminated the "silver bullets" from SEO but they were there in the past.