H1 tag proper uses

[DanDeceuster]

Ok I see this happening all of the time. I get my hands on a new website and there are one of four header tag issues:

1. There are no H1 tags at all

2. There are multiple H1 tags on the same page

3. Every page has an identical H1 tag

4. Header tags are used all out of order

Do any of these have a negative impact on rankings? I've always tried to get one H1 tag on each page, have it be the first header tag, and make it unique to each page. Is this a waste of itme? Could improper header tag use hurt a website?

[eyepaq]

Good question - I'm also interested in getting an answer on this. I am also trying to get one single h1 tag, unique, on each page.

[ninjamarketer]

I have not seen negative impact due to H1 tag as much as I have seen positive. H1 tag optimization used to be popular optimization technique few years ago until lately it has been downgraded in priority by search engines. The top ranking factors are -

• domain authority

• link quality and quantity

• social signals

• title tag keyword usage

• Anchor text from backlinks

http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

Note- Keyword is title is way more important that keyword is H1 tag.

[matrixspa]

Hi Dan,
you can see a Matt Cutts video about this (see the attachment).

In my opinion it's better  to focus on one H1 per page in order to focus the attention of the crawler on only few main keywords. All H1 have to be different. Take care about pagination, since you can easly duplicate meta tags and H1. In order to avoid it, use the meta FOLLOW,NOINDEX and use the canonical tag.

Luca

watch?v=GIn5qJKU8VM

[StalkerB]

Latest SEOmoz correlation data showed that h1 use is not a significant ranking factor (or at least not as a significant ranking factor) as once thought. I'll try and dig that up for you.

UPDATE - Here's the links I was thinking of - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements - and - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-the-biggest-seo-mistakes-seomoz-has-ever-made - BONUS - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/bing-vs-google-prominence-of-ranking-elements

Matt Cutts has done a video on this as well - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIn5qJKU8VM

Basically use the where it makes sense, I try to avoid it in the logo of the page and have just one h1 text header, but there have been times when a couple more may have made sense.

[Getz.pro]

Hs have little influence on rankings at this moment. However, as for good writing practice, the use of a single H1 tag as the first Header tag is always recommended for best practice. H1s should not all be the same and should represent the page contents so the reader has a visual cue that (s)he is on the correct page.

[Getz.pro]

great links

[eyepaq]

So that means baisicly that the H1 is part of the design session and no longer part (no longer also part )of the SEO sessions.

So is there any on-page SEO element still important for ranking ? as it looks like only content and links from outside sources are the only things that counts.

[Getz.pro]

Content, alt tags, anchor text to internal pages are always favorites : )