What is an H1 tag?
Let me assume that you don’t know about it.
H1 is an HTML tag that represents the heading of an article or topic on a website.
So the question is why the H1 tag is important?
I said H1 tag indicates the heading of the web page and it gives an idea to the user what the topic is about. So that’s the core reason why H1 are important for search engine too.
Back in 2012, in the very beginning of my career in digital marketing, I had an education institute site to rank. In most of my targeted keywords, the site ranking position was around 7, 8, 15, 16…
So then I started brainstorming myself what could be wrong.
Then I came across a few blogs regarding the use of h1 tags.
So I decided to have A/B testing on h1 tags.
- The first thing I asked my technical team to have <h1> tag on each page.
- The second thing was to update the heading for each page.
After few days I checked the report, ranks position had a positive impact.
Few things you will need take while forming H1 tags
There should be only one H1 tag
Many SEO experts use more than one H1 tag, but having more than H1 doesn’t make much sense. As single page can’t talk about two topics at a time. Having more than one H1 tag confuses search engine to judge the page and dilutes the sense of H1 tag. Here is the video by Matt Cutt explain why we should have only one H1 tag.
H1 tag content length should be around 60-70 character
H1 tag should be such that, by reading it reader should have a visualisation what the content is going to be about. So you can use the long sentence as 2-3 words are not enough. But make sure do not make too long.
Try to use long tail keyword / focused keyword in H1 tag
This very important, do not forget to use keywords in an H1 tag, as the search engine will get an idea what is the whole article about.