Does it matter what text you wrap in an H1 tag?

[TakeLessons]

Typically H1 tags are reserved for page headings, i.e. on a blog post the blog post title is very often the pages H1, or top-level heading as the W3C puts it.

On the SEOmoz home page they currently have "SEO Software." as their H1 tag, which seems perfectly reasonable and to me fits the W3C criteria.

However, what if the primary keyword for SEOmoz was "seo community" so they decided to wrap just those two words in the sentence that follows on their home page and maintain the existing style of the words "seo community" with CSS. (see attachment)

Are there any arguments against doing that?

Would Google be able to detect this? If so, would Google care?

I do believe the overall importance of the H1 tag has lessened to a degree, however I still believe they are valuable to an extent and would love to hear anyone's thoughts.

7NZcD.png

[Gustav-Northclick]

Hi!

The H1 is always important, I've tried several test with the h1 and title tag to see if the correlation still works and improve rankings. In my experience it does.

As long as you don't use css to modify the h1 so that another element of the text below is actually bigger or resemble an h1 it should be fine. Don't try to fool Google by changing the appeareance of the h1 to much(use common sense), remember you can always use an H2 tag below if it makes the content better.

Remember the H1 should always be unique for the page and should not be the same on several pages.

[Gustav-Northclick]

Hi! to specify: Yes, the words in the H1 tag matters

[TakeLessons]

Hey Gustav, thanks for the response. As a quick follow up for clarity on my end. Here's an example of what I was referring to using the SEOmoz home page as an example again. Would it be okay from your perspective to do the following?

SEOmoz Pro combines campaign-based monitoring, actionable recommendations, and premium access to the web's largest

SEO community

• try it free for 30 days.

Again, assuming that primary keyword for SEOmoz is "seo community." To me this is an effort to try and fool Google into thinking that SEO community is your top-level heading when in reality it's just a section of a sentence. Would you agree?

[Gustav-Northclick]

Ok, now I understand what you meant

I agreee, In my opinion that's not a good way to use an H1 tag.

It would still work for rankings but I would also consider it as trying to cheat google.

It's always better to look at the sentence and restructure it and make it more of a selling copy text, for example:

The largest SEO community!

SEOmoz Pro combines campaign-based monitoring, actionable recommendations, and premium access to the web's largest seo community <a href="">- try it free for 30 days!</a>.

/ Gustav

[DenisL]

Great Q&A here - very clear and helpful.  Now let me expand the question to H2 tags.  If I keep the H1 as a proper heading on a page, but embed an H2 tag in a sentence is that considered acceptable SEO tactics?

Here's the example - as the 3rd paragraph of a page:

If you’re interested in

commercial landscaping design

, we’re the ones to call.  Call us at 1-866-236-7263 or contact us by email.

What do you think?

[Gustav-Northclick]

The same H1 rule goes for all other headers.

Headers are headers, mixing them in with the text content isn't very helpful in a user perspective.

A quick tip is to try to add questions to the h2 to keep the text SEO and user friendly.

So let's rephrase this into a h2 question:

Interested in commercial landscaping design?

We're the ones to call!

Call us at 1-866-236-7263 or contact us by email.

Hope I could help

Best,

Gustav