H1 Tags

Updated by Jo Cameron. November 8, 2024

What is an H1 tag?

H1 tags are used to indicate the primary topic of your webpage to visitors and search engines. HTML heading tags, H1 to H6, are used to format the text on a page with H1 defining the most important and visually prominent heading on the page.

In HTML code, H1 tags appear within angle brackets as shown in this example:

<h1>Main page header goes here</h1>

H1 tags are an important part of on-page SEO and a key method of organizing information so it can be easily comprehended by search engines and humans.

In this article we’ll explore why H1 tags are important, H1 tag examples, discover best practices, outline the difference between H1 tags and title tags, and show you how to easily audit your site’s H1 tags.

Including an H1 tag at the top of your content gives search engines, human visitors, and screen reader users a quick insight into your page's topic.

H1 tags play a crucial role in SEO as they help search engines understand the content and structure of a webpage. By using an H1 tag, you can clearly define the primary keyword or topic of your webpage, which can improve your page’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). Additionally, H1 tags can also improve the user experience by providing a clear and concise title that helps readers understand the content of the page. This dual benefit of enhancing both search engine comprehension and user engagement makes H1 tags indispensable for effective search engine optimization.

Moz's Sr Search Scientist Tom Capper says that “From a direct ranking perspective, a clear heading on a page is an important signal of what a page is about.”

There have been numerous studies on the necessity of H1 tags from an SEO perspective and there are several reasons why it's important to keep using H1s as an SEO best practice:

• H1s support accessibility.
• Google may use H1s in place of meta titles, in some rare cases.
• Heading use correlates with higher rankings, while there is no evidence that heading themselves are a Google ranking factor.

For the purposes of clarity and accessibility the H1 tag should be the first headline that a user sees when the content loads. It indicates what your page is about, and encourages visitors to continue reading your content after clicking on your site from a search engine results page or other online location. H1 tags should instantly let your readers or potential customers say to themselves, “yes, I've found the page I'm looking for”.

Header tags are also a way to organize the content of your page into an easy-to-consume hierarchy. There are six available HTML header tags that can be used, from <h1> to <h6>. When designing your site, H1 tags should be the most visually prominent on the page. H2 tags should be a bit smaller than H1s, H3 tags should be a bit smaller than H2s, and so on.

Generally speaking, you should only use one H1 tag per page. You can and should use multiple H2 tags to divide your content into sections that are easy for users to skim. H2 tags are a great place to include mentions of your primary keyword, in addition to related terms generated from a keyword suggestion tool. You can also get ideas for your H2 tags by reviewing the People Also Ask box within search results. Google sources this data from questions people are asking that are related to the keyword you've entered. This offers insight into the questions Google is aiming to answer for its users. Providing answers to these questions in your content is a good way to not only increase your chances of placement in People Also Ask, but also make your page more enriching and tailored to potential readers.

Adding H1 tags to your website is a straightforward process that can be done using various content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace. In most cases, the CMS will automatically assign the page title as the H1 tag. However, you can also add or modify H1 tags manually by using the HTML editor or by selecting the text you want to assign as the H1 tag and choosing the heading option from the drop-down menu. This flexibility allows you to ensure that your H1 tags are optimized for both search engines and user experience.

An H1 tag typically consists of an opening <h1> tag, the title text, and a closing </h1> tag. The title text should be concise, descriptive, and compelling, and should include the primary keyword or topic of the webpage. The H1 tag can be styled using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to improve its visual presentation on the webpage. It is recommended to keep the H1 tag short and concise, ideally under 60 characters, to ensure that it is easily readable and visible on the webpage. This not only helps in maintaining a clean and professional look but also ensures that the primary keyword is prominently featured.

H1 tag examples

On the page that you are currently reading, the text “H1 Tag” is our H1. It is the highest-level way to classify what this page is about, so it is assigned as an H1 tag in the HTML of this page. As we get into more specific topics and questions regarding H1 tags, we use H2 to classify sub-sections of the page.

In this example from Nordstrom, ‘Women’s’ Shoes’ is used as the H1. When it comes to header tags, it is best to keep it simple and to the point. In this case, even though the text is not particularly large, it is still clearly visible without distracting users from the content on the page.
 

On a blog post or long-form article, your post title is generally the best choice for your H1 tag. In this example blog post from The New York Times, the blog post title serves as an eye-catching header for the page.

SEOs, content creators, and website designers. As a key part of on-page optimization and the primary focal point for a user when they land on your page, your H1 has the power to keep users on your site for longer.

Most WordPress themes are designed to automatically use the page or post title as the H1 tag, making it easier for website owners to ensure their H1 tags are properly assigned.

Should you include your target keyword? Of course! You’d need to make a good case to exclude it, even if it’s just a signal to a visitor that they are in the right place. In some cases it’s been identified that H1s have been used instead of meta titles in the search results.

Many web designers or website owners who are new to search engine optimization will use HTML headers only as a design element, without consideration for the SEO impact of their use. H1s should be used as a way to optimize your page for your target keyword, not simply as a styling choice.

It may also be the case that many SEOs will say that the main heading should always be an H1, and subsequent headings H2, and H3, and so on. While this is still considered best practice, as far as Google is concerned, they are perfectly capable of understanding your content regardless of the heading tags. As Tom Capper explains “The main heading, whatever tag it may have is still important, and best practice is for it to be an H1, with a good heading hierarchy beneath. Using good, clean HTML can help web crawling/parsing technologies that may be less robust than Google’s - such as screen readers, or smaller search engines.”

Can a page have multiple H1 tags?

Yes, anything is possible! However, generally speaking, your content should have a single H1 at the top of the page. In some circumstances, where a page truly covers multiple high-level topics, multiple H1s can be used. Google's John Muller has stated that it will not penalize pages with multiple H1 tags. However, we recommend sticking to one H1 tag per page in order to keep your content topically focused, to prevent confusion for users of all abilities and issues with keyword cannibalization on your site more generally.

H1 tag length

There is no technical limit to the character count of an H1 tag, though we recommend keeping it under 60 characters to ensure that your headline is easily readable. This also allows you to use the same text in both your H1 and meta title, if you decide to follow this route.

Every page on your site needs an H1 tag

H1 tags should be a required feature on all of your site's pages. Even if the page is not a content article with a clearly defined headline, you should still come up with a keyword-optimized H1 that clearly indicates to search engines and users what the page is about.

Title tags are another important HTML element. Like H1 tags, title tags indicate what your page is about to both users and search engines. However, there are some key differences between H1 tags and title tags.

Title tags appear in search engine results pages (SERPs), meaning they are the title of the page that users will see before clicking to your site. They also appear in browser tabs. HTML title tags are not visible anywhere on the content of a page. H1 tags, by comparison, are prominently visible to users on a webpage.

The key difference is that title tags are primarily visible in the SERPs, while H1 tags are visible on your page. It is important to incorporate your primary target keyword for a page into both the title tag and H1.

This is where the job of Content Marketers and SEOs intersect, as Tom Capper says “A heading will entice a user that has clicked through from the SERP to keep reading - it needs to coexist well with what they saw in the meta title displayed in SERPs, and be compelling in itself.”

Can your title tag and H1 tag be the same?

In some instances, title tags and H1 tags can (and should) contain the same text. In the Nordstrom example shown above, “Women's Shoes” is both the meta title and H1 of the page.

In the New York Times example, the page's H1 and meta title are different. The meta title is “The Best Hiking Boots of 2023 | Reviews By Wirecutter”. In some instances, you may want to include a few Click-Through-Rate improving features in your title, that you don't necessarily want visible on your page. In this case, those features are brand name, the word “best” and the year the article was published.

It is important to make sure that every page on your site has a single, keyword-optimized H1 tag. The easiest way to perform this analysis is by running an SEO audit, leveraging a tool like Moz's On-Demand Crawl. Moz will identify all pages on your site that have missing or invalid H1 tags. You can export these results to a CSV or view them in-app. This is the simplest and quickest way to highlight all pages on your site that have issues with their H1 tags.

• Are H1 Tags Necessary for Ranking? [SEO Experiment]
• What are Title Tags?
• The SEO Keyword Research Master Guide