How Google Considers Multiple H1 Tags in One Page

Posted On : February 22nd, 2018   By : Durga Prasad Kundu   To : Technical SEO

It is a common myth that H1 plays a very important role in SEO. Many webmasters & SEOs put a lot of effort to perfectly optimize the H1 tag to get better ranking for the keywords.

And there is also a common misconception that with multiple H1 tags in a page, Google just gets confused to assess the importance & relevancy of the text/keywords & the overall content of the page.

So, where actually Google stands; how it sees H1 tag or multiple h1 tag? Is it bad to use multiple H1?

Well, it is more like you should stop spamming or abusing the header tags & their numbers than wasting much time in thinking how to perfectly optimize them.

John Mueller has answered clearly this in 2017 & again now that you can use as many times you can if you feel it pretty normal & logical to use.

As many as you want.

— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) April 12, 2017

& two days ago;

I’d use H1’s for what they’re meant – to show primary headings on pages. If you end up with multiple, that’s fine too (and it’s pretty standard with HTML5 anyway).

— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) February 21, 2018

Technically, H1 & other header tags help looking at the page hierarchy. In HTML5, the semantic elements like header, footer, section etc, help representing the hierarchy perfectly and one can use one H1 tag in each such elements safely.

So, if you think different sections need separate H1 tag, don’t worry, feel free to use.

Just don’t add the same text in every H1.

Think from users’ point of view. And lastly, don’t worry about Google’s stand. Google has its own way to assess the quality & context of a page content rather than simply depending on some tags & keywords.