Issues with Multiple H1 tags on homepage?

[Veevlimike]

Hi folks,

My homepage has 3 identical H1 tags due to the fact that I have had to create individual hero images (with headings) for desktop, tablet and mobile. I couldn't get my theme to display the layout in exactly the way I wanted on each device without doing a specific hero image and tag for each device type.

Does this have a major impact on my SEO?

Thanks,
Mike.

[StephanSolomonidis]

Hi Mike,

I wouldn't worry about it—it won't have a major impact. Google will see all those H1 tags, but unless they get the sense, from the rest of your content, that you're relentlessly stuffing the keyword into the article text (and it doesn't sound like you are), it'll be fine.

What I would want to make sure of, though, is that Googlebot is definitely rendering the page in the way you expect. Sounds as if, rendered properly, only one H1 and header image should be visible on each device type? You should take a look at the page using the Fetch and Render tool in Google Search Console to make sure that, whether as desktop or smartphone, everything looks as it should. If you're carrying out this exercise across many pages on your site, you will find it faster to use Screaming Frog's "render screenshot" option.

[ThompsonPaul]

Agree with Stephan - the dupe H1s, while not ideal, are not going to be a significant SEO issue.

But what will be the issue is the extra page bloat and therefore load speed of all those pages. Not necessarily for SEO, but most certainly for usability. There are much more efficient ways to get your pages to scale for different devices than to run three sets of headers.

Paul

[Veevlimike]

Thanks Stephan,

That's good to know. You're totally correct, it's the same heading and same image with the image just cropped differently per device, and with only one of the rows appearing on each device. It seems to be displaying fine.

Thanks for your help with this!

Mike.

[Veevlimike]

Thanks Paul,

Agreed. Its for the hero image only on the home page and I'm in discussions with the theme provider to see if there's a way to have only one H1 tag, but have the image change behind it as you move between devices. We'll see how I get on with that!

Thanks for your help it's greatly appreciated!

Mike.