What you should know about h1 headings

Headings are important elements on web pages: they provide structure and guidance to both readers and search engines. The h1 heading is the most important, and crucial for SEO SEOThis is what you need to know about the h1.

In the HTML we distinguish so-called 'headings'. These are a kind of headers with which you can structure documents. Those headers come in 6 different levels, from h1 to h6. H1 is the most important: with this you indicate, for example, the main headline or most important text on a web page.

Structure

De h1-tag volgt dezelfde logica als veel andere HTML-tags: de tekst is voor en achter ingesloten door respectievelijk <h1> en </h1>.

In HTML code it looks like this:

<h1>Dit is de belangrijkste (kop)tekst</h1>

Headings are one of the most important on-page ranking factors on a page. Not surprisingly, search engines make good use of these headers to determine what a web page is about. Therefore, the following points are important:

1. Provide a good heading structure

H1s do not stand alone. They are part of a complete heading structure, indicated by tags that bear labels from h1 to h6. Make sure the entire heading structure is correct. For example, for an article page, the headline must have an h1 tag.

Subheadings then logically get h2 tags. Do you want to further divide an article section under a subheading into subsections? Then you can use an h3 for the subheadings for these subsections. It is not wise to divide your article much further, it quickly creates a too complicated structure for the reader.

2. Include Important Keywords

H1s are ideal places to include key keywords. This is also important for the reader: they too know immediately what the page has to offer with a good header. With a keyword research you determine with which words you have a good chance of success in a good position in the search engines.

Over-optimization is not possible, an h1 tag simply consists of too few words. Of course you can over-optimize the rest of the page, by using certain keywords unnaturally and exaggerated. Always watch out for that.

3. Use 30 to 70 characters

A good rule of thumb for the text of an h1 is to use 30 to 70 characters. Not too short, not too long.

4. Do not use more than one h1 per page

We recommend that you never use more than one h1 per page. That way you make optimal use of its SEO power.

Is placing multiple h1s prohibited? Well no, it isn't. But you do dilute the expressiveness of the keywords used. It will be less clear to search engines what is the most important topic on your page. And you can see that in a lower ranking for relevant search queries.

This advice works always and everywhere? Well, almost. There are exceptions where this advice does not apply. A good example is an overview page of blogs or articles. Many CMSs will give all headings on that page an h1 tag. All headings on such a page are equally important, and all reflect the title of the article.

5. Trust is good, checking is better

Do you want to check whether your website or webpage uses h1s correctly? Then do the following. Use your mouse to select the headline or text that you think is most important. Then right click and choose 'Inspect'. You now get a view of the underlying HTML code of the selected element in a window. You should see the headline you selected in h1 tags.

In the image above you can see that the headline of this article is neatly placed between h1 tags.

The above method is workable for one or a few pages. Do you have a large website with many pages that you would like to subject to an h1 inspection? Then use a tool like Screaming Frog. That is a powerful 'crawler' that scans your entire website and can identify pages without h1.

And what about the title tag?

Another confusing detail to conclude: HTML has another tag for the title of a page, the 'title tag' or