A webpage layout is defined by using Headers. Terms of importance on a webpage are usually the biggest and more prominent. The H1 tag stands for Header1 which, in HTML, is used in conjunction with the other header tags, H2 through H6, to determine site layout. The lower the number, the less importance to the page these tags indicate. And, of course, it breaks the page into logical portions for a human reader. Think of a magazine article. The article title is likely the most important element and is defined as H1. Then, perhaps, there is a subtitle which gets assigned a H2 tag and so on until the article body itself begins and is usually given a ‘p’ or ‘paragraph’ tag. The search engines also want to see a page with some logical breakdown of content.
But, is it OK to have multiple Header1 tags on a single page? This is a contested topic among SEO professionals. Some will argue that it’s fine to include multiple H1 tags on a page, within reason. Others will insist that only one, the most important element, should exist. One thing that they agree on is that abusing H1 tags will definitely get a webpage penalized by Google and Bing. So creating multiple tags on a page for the purpose of trying to improve ranking is definitely frowned upon. In 2009, Google made a statement that multiple H1 tags on a page are not a problem as long as kept within reason. For example, look at WordPress. It’s widely accepted to be a great web platform for SEO. Their default theme, Twenty Eleven, creates two H1 tags by default; one for the site title and one for the page or post title. That’s a pretty clear message that having two on the page is not a problem. Of course, just to throw things off, Bing recommends only one per page.
Images can also utilize H tags. Bing recommends to avoid this, but Google does not. So, it doesn’t appear as if using Header tags as part of images is a huge problem. There are many businesses which search well that use H1 on their images. Perhaps if the image is important to the page, it may deserve a H1 tag. Although, perhaps a better approach is to leave H1 tags as a page or post title. This is because, most often, the same logo is shown on multiple pages and usually above the page title. As an SEO approach, developers may want to use different tags for each individual page/post. This is much easier to achieve with a single H1 tag per page.
How much SEO benefit will I get from using Header tags? Tags are proven to help gain positive search results and on-page search engine optimization. “On-page SEO only goes so far,” says Jim Jeffrey from a Attorney SEO Company. “However, if your only means of promoting a website is organic, on-page SEO, then page layout and tags are the most important factors.” In this scenario, designers would certainly want to take advantage of whatever tools are at their disposal.
So, yes, these tags are meaningful for a few reasons. For one, it’s possible to gain some SEO advantages by properly assigning these tags to the right page elements. It’s also true that abusing them is surely a way to get a website penalized by the search engines. Also, including too many is confusing for the reader and since that’s who a site is ultimately for, it should look right. Even though there appears to be no problems with using more than one, designers may wish to keep one single most-important element reserved for H1. In addition, developers can create separate keyword rich page elements, one for H1 and one for a page title. This way a website can garner as much SEO value as possible.
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