Do you think H1 tags in SEO are just about the title? In essence, the H1 tags are much more than just a title— a number of SEO experts have said that they noticed significant ranking improvement when they optimized the website for the H1 tag. This itself reveals that the Google search algorithm takes it very seriously. So, for your business to improve ranking and succeed online, it is important to understand the use of title tags in your content marketing efforts.
H1 Tag in SEO is not just about making the content of the page easier to look at & more organized, it is also a part of a good SEO strategy. They make it easy for search engine bots to read & identify the content of the page & categorize it, which is a cornerstone for SEO. Your site can’t get ranked, if bots are unable to crawl the page. Technical SEO is about the infrastructure of the website, which also includes Heading. Header tags are an effective & efficient way of improving the technical SEO of the website.
What are H1 Tags in SEO?
H1 tags in SEO strategy, in simple terms, are HTML elements. In other words, they are pieces of HTML code that make certain keywords stand out on the webpage.
It would be easy for you to understand about H1 Tags in SEO with an example— we’ll consider an article in a Newspaper that grabs your attention. So, why you thought about reading the entire article— 99% chances are, the title of the article grabbed your attention— might be it was designed differently giving an interesting look.
H1 tags in SEO are used in a similar way— it makes out certain words from the webpage’s content to stand out, which helps the raiders’ to easily understand the content of the page and whether they would be interested in reading it or not. In addition to that, H1 tags when used in conjunction with keywords, meta description & keyword-targeted content— also helps the search engine bots to understand the page’s content & ranking the search engine ranking for targeted keywords. There are different types of header tags, which are categorized in terms of numbers. Let’s know more:
Types of H1 tags in SEO
The numbered header tags are categorized from H1 to H6— and each header tag has a different purpose helping search engines understand Google bots & crawlers get important information about the page or the site.
Other H1 tags in SEO include H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6.
The maximum size of the heading is at H1, which is mostly used for the most important part of the content on the page. While a lot of CMS automatically add H1 tags in SEO to the blogs’ title, a number of themes can interfere with this setting. You can always change the same in the template files of the theme.
H2 tags are used to segregate the content in the H1 tags in easily understandable pieces. And, further H3 tags are used to break up the H2 content — the headings most often do not reach H4 tags and beyond.
Previously, with the decrease in the numbering in the header tag, the letter size decreased — which means that font size for H2 used to be smaller than H1, the font size of H3 was smaller than H2 & so on. But with the evolution of HTML, styles & font sizes are more flexible. But still, the font size of H1 is kept larger, which is why mostly the H1 tag in SEO is used as the title of the page’s content.
How to see a Page’s H1 Tags & other headings?
You can find out header tags in the HTML code in the backend of the site. You can follow the following steps to check the code for H1 tags.
- Open the URL of the page you want to check for H1 tags.
- Use shortcut Ctrl & U.
- The above step will open a separate window displaying the HTML code.
- Use Ctrl & F — to search— type <h1> to check which part of the page is using the H1 tag.
- You can use the same steps to check for h2, h3, h4, h5 & h6 tags.
Are Title tags & H1 Tags in SEO the same thing?
Most beginners get confused between title tags & H1 tags in SEO— you should know that they are not the same thing. The key difference between the title tag and H1 tags is in the location where they appear on the web page.
H1 Tags: While H1 tags will appear on the webpage which the users can very easily see. On the other hand, H1 tags do not usually appear on the search engine pages and they only act as the title of the page for which it is written.
Title Tags: Contrary to the H1 tags, title tags are displayed on the search engine, which appears in the form of hyperlinks that the user will click on to see the entire page’s content. The title tag will also appear under the title bar of the page and it appears as the default title when the page is bookmarked. However, unlike the H1 tags in SEO, title tags will not be shown on the page.
However, experts suggest that it is good for your website’s SEO to keep the title tags the same as the H1 tags in SEO, which can be made more SEO friendly by putting in the name of the site.
For instance, if the title of your article is “how to choose the best hiking shoes”, and the title of your website is leisure.com then you must make the title tags as “how to choose the best hiking shoes— leisure.com.”
How H1 tags help SEO?
For the search engines, the toughest job is to understand the context in which a specific web page has been written. So, they make use of several signals to understand what the website owner intends to convey with the help of the website’s content— H1 tags & the page tags are also part of those signals. Search engine crawlers read the HTML code to understand what keywords are included in the h1 tags. With h1 tags & the keywords included therein, the search engine crawlers understand the content of the page. So, if you are including keywords in the h1 tag. This will make it easy for the search engines to easily make out the intent of the webpage and what is it all about.
In addition to that, another reason that makes the h1 tag important for your website’s SEO is that — it makes navigation easier for the users. A glance at the page will give a clear idea to the user about the content.
H1 Tags SEO Best Practices:
So, how to write effective h1 tags and good heading. While we’ve already discussed everything about h1 tags, in this section, we’ll discuss what are the best H1 tags practices.
- The H1 tags in SEO & title tags should be the same (with only slight differences if necessary).
- The heading must include your primary keyword.
- Short headings are SEO-friendly while long heading is not a good SEO practice.
- H1 tags should be visible to the user.
- SEO experts recommend only one h1 tag on a page.
- The h1 tag across the page must be designed differently than the rest of the content.
- Headings must be used in a hierarchy.
While many people confuse between H1 tags in SEO & title tags— text but it is perfectly fine to keep the two the same. In fact, SEO experts recommend that it is good for your SEO to keep them the same. As a general practice, you should keep the h1 tags and the page title the same or maybe very closely related.
About h2, h3, h4, etc?
Are other header tags like h2, h3, h4, h5 & h6 important? Yes, they are, but not as important as h1 tags in SEO. These subheadings can be considered as a way of organizing your content on the page for your readers and not just for the search engine. And, you must include your keywords and use these subheadings to organize your content (in a way that the readers will be interested in reading it).
They can be used in the following order on the webpage.
H1: Main header
H2: Subhead 1
H2: Subhead 2
H3: Secondary subhead 1
H3: Secondary subhead 2
H2: Subhead 3
H3: Secondary subhead 1
H3: Secondary subhead 2
H3: Secondary subhead 3
H2: Subhead 4
H2: Subhead 5
While some pieces of content will not include any subheads and some might have multiple. Headings & subheadings are a way of presenting your content in the best possible way to the audience. It’s purely about the users of the website & for improving their experience— and not about the page’s SEO. It’s all about organizing your content for your user! That will mean you have to keep the clear & layout simple.