Even if Google says its ranking systems work perfectly without major H1 headers, accessibility and readability are good reasons for using the headers correctly.
SEO News: On October 3, webmaster trends analyst John Muller introduced #AskGoogleWebmasters, which describes how Google treats H1 headings in terms of ranking. The explanation caused a slight commotion.
What Google said
"Our systems are not too picky, and we will try to work with HTML the way we find it - whether it be a single H1 heading, several H1 headers or just stylized text fragments without semantic HTML at all," Muller said.
Read more about this in our article:
SEO news: Google says several H1s won't hinder your SEO
In other words, Muller says Google systems should not rely on a specific heading structure.
All this is strange
It would seem that Mueller’s answer contradicts the long-standing “best practice” of using and optimizing the headers H1, H2 and later.
“It seems to run counter to the many years of SEO advice that all SEO experts have given me,” tweeted Dr. John Grohol, founder of PsychCentral.com, expressing a reaction that many share. Others cited their own experience of observing how the implementation of an SEO H1 header can affect natural visibility.
Hierarchy of Hs
The headline hierarchy tells you what the content on the page is, and how ideas are grouped together, making it easier for users to navigate the page. Using multiple H1s or skipping headings altogether can create a confusing page structure and make it more difficult to read.
“SEO page titles will enable assistive technologies to present the status of the text title to the user,” explained in the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). “The screen reader can recognize the code and declare the text as a heading with its own level, give a sound signal or provide some other sound indicator.”
Yost de Valk, founder of the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin, noted that most WordPress themes have one H1 title.
SEO consultant Alan Blaveys pointed to a WebAIM survey that found that 69% of screen readers use headlines to navigate the page, while 52% find headline levels very useful.
Many optimizers are concerned that Google’s lack of emphasis on accessibility standards, including rel = prev / next, may prevent website owners from implementing them, which may make it difficult for users who depend on screen reading technology to understand the content, for example, users with violations view. Do this at your own risk.
H1 and SEO
“It is naive to think that Google completely ignores the H1 tag,” said Hamlet Batista, CEO and founder of RankSense.
“I saw H1 instead of heading tags in search results. Therefore, it is nice to make H1 the key theme of the page (that is, H1 - the title of the site or page); in case this happens, you will have a good enough headline, ”Batista said, adding that having multiple H1s can provide less control over what text can appear in search results if H1 is used instead of the heading.
You should still use the correct headers
John Muller says Google can usually figure out what's important on the page, even if you're not using headings or heading hierarchies.
As Muller said at the end of #AskGoogleWebmasters: “Thinking about this topic, SEO should not be your main goal. Instead, think about your users: if you have ways to make your content accessible to them, whether with a few H1 headers or other standard HTML constructs, this will not interfere with your SEO efforts. ”
Futureinapps adheres to the standard SEO framework, which is convenient for users, thanks to the readability of content, and search engines, due to the correct structure of the html page. Turn to the professionals!
