How to Create the Perfect H1 Tag for SEO

By Raul Simea | SEO | 0 Comments

How to Create the Perfect H1 Tag for SEO? How to analyze and optimize them? In this comprehensive guide we will see how to use Hn tags to improve the SEO of a website.

What are the H1,… H6 tags?

There are 6 tags (HTML tags) of type Hn: H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 and H6. They are used to add titles to your texts and to prioritize your content. For simplicity and to talk about all these tags in general, replace the number after H with an “n”.

The number after H determines the level of the title. An H3 tag will be a subtitle of an H2 tag which in turn will be the subtitle of an H1 tag.

Hn tags are also called title tags but they should NOT be confused with the title tag (meta title).

What does an H1 tag look like in HTML?

Here’s what an H1 tag looks like in your site’s HTML code:

H1 tag in HTML

In the screenshot above, the H1 label is the part highlighted in blue.

Why are Hn tags important in SEO?

Hn tags are very useful for natural references to the pages of your site. They are undoubtedly among the most important criteria after the TITLE tag.

When calculating the relevance of a page, Google gives more weight to the words in your titles. 

It seems quite logical: when you read a text, the titles will help you understand the content a page. 

It is very possible that at the beginning you only scan the article, they will become even more important. 

This is very well understood by Google and for this reason, the words that are in the titles and subtitles of your pages are treated as important.

The hierarchy of titles is also important. An H1 tag is more important than an H2 tag. 

The words in the first tag will have more weight in calculating the relevance of your page than the words you add in the second.

What words should you use in Hn tags?

As you can see, you need to choose carefully the words that you will add in the Hn tags. This means that you must first perform a keyword analysis.

Ideally, the H1 tag should contain the main phrase for which you have decided to position the page in search engines. 

Indeed, since this tag is the most important title, it needs to contain your main keyword so that it has a maximum weight in calculating the relevance of your page. 

The following tags (H2, H3, etc.) should contain the secondary phrases that you identified during your keyword analysis.

If you write an article whose main topic is “how to choose a mouse”, the h1 tag should contain “How to choose a mouse?”.

You can then add h2 tags from sub-sub-topics or keywords related to the main topic such as: “Find a gaming mouse for your hand”, “What is the right price for a gaming mouse”, “How to check if my gaming mouse is of quality”, Etc..

How should Hn labels be organized?

As we saw earlier in this article, the number behind H defines the importance of the title. 

This means that the order in which you add title tags to your page is also important. 

For example, you cannot start an article directly with an H2 tag without adding an H1 tag first. Below is a view that shows what a correct hierarchy of Hn tags should look like.

Hn Tag hierarchy

If you don’t organize your Hn tags correctly, Google will have a hard time understanding the content of the page. A misunderstanding will lead to the loss of the relevance of the key terms for your page with a negative effect on its position in search engines.

Hn Tags analysis 

Fortunately, there are many tools that will allow you to check if Hn tags are well organized on your pages. I recommend that you use the free Alyze tool to check the contents of each Hn tag, as well as their hierarchy.

How many H1 tags are needed per page?

No consensus has been reached on this point. 

Some people think it’s not a problem to have a few H1 tags on one page, while others, like me, prefer to have only one H1 tag on the page.

Since, in SEO, it is better for a page to deal with only one main topic, I think it is more logical that there is only one H1 per page. 

Indeed, the H1 tag is the most important title and must contain the main topic of the page, so I find it strange that there may be more than one main topic for the same page.

 Moreover, most CMS, such as WordPress or Prestashop, are usually configured to have only one h1 per page. 

For example, when you create a new post in WordPress, the title of the article will be directly in H1 because it is the main topic of the page. I advise you to simplify your life and use only one H1 tag per page.

How long can Hn labels be?

There is no set length for Hn tags. However, we must not forget that they will be used as a title in your text. Therefore, it is preferable to be relatively concise if you do not want to completely interrupt the design of your site. 

By the way, the more words you add to the Hn tags, the more you will dilute the impact of each word to calculate Google relevance. 

Therefore, it is preferable to use relatively short titles. But remember that your headlines are present primarily to your visitors and the pages should be read with pleasure.

A common problem with Hn!

If you analyze the Hn using the Alyze tool, it is very possible to find title tags that you did not add.

This is a common problem encountered on WordPress, Prestashop or any other CMS. 

The blame comes from designers and theme creators, who tend to use Hn tags to apply a certain design. 

That’s why you may have on your WordPress theme, for example, H3 on the word “frase” or H4 on the word “car” in your Prestashop store.

If this is the case with your site, the best solution is to correct the theme and fix these mistakes. They are a problem for optimizing the SEO of your site.

Let’s wrap this up

That’s it, now you know the role of Hn tags and how to optimize them to improve your SEO. 

If your site is already online, I suggest you initially check the Hn tag architecture with Alyze and, if you have a problem, try and fix it.

Then do a keyword analysis and finally optimize your Hn tags accordingly.