Google still uses semantic headers to understand the context of various parts of your pages.
SEO beginners have heard of the importance of using the right SEO headings on the page. They all have their own hierarchy, for example, the headings H1, H2, H3, etc., and the main heading H1 is usually one, that is, the first level heading H1, and this is usually the name of the page. Such a structure, for example, on our website. H1 = website title is also a common practice. For SEO, it is important that a clear html page structure helps readers to read the information on it. This is essentially the foundation of SEO.
But here is the new SEO information!
However, recently it turned out that for Google, it is supposedly not so important whether there is one H1 heading on a page or several of them. This was announced by Google Trend Analyst John Muller in the issue of #AskGoogleWebmasters (translation: "ask Google webmasters").
“Our systems have no problems when it comes to multiple H1 headers per page,” the analyst said, adding that using semantically structured headers helps Google understand your pages.
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Question. “Can we get a clear answer to the question of how to handle the headlines?” I see that on some pages several h1s are used (all but one are visually hidden). All relate to this in their own way. And things like the <main> tag, ”@chaeppeli asked via Twitter.
Answer. As mentioned above, Muller explained that Google systems are not puzzled by the multiple H1 headers, noting that this is a “fairly common pattern on the web.”
How Google uses headers. “We use headings to better understand the context of the various parts of the page,” Muller said. “Having clear, semantically understandable headings is useful for understanding any page; however, we have to work with the network as it is, and much of this is not structured at all. ”
“For users, the difference is minimal - both types of pages can be extremely important. In turn, our systems are not too legible, and we will try to work with HTML pages in the form they are created - be they have one H1 heading, several H1 headings or just stylized text fragments without semantic HTML. ”
Why should SEO care? “In short, thinking about this topic, SEO should not be your main goal,” Muller advised. “Think about your users instead: 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.”
For optimizers who have inherited sites with multiple H1s, it might not be worth the time to reformat all of these headers. However, since Google uses headings to understand the context of various parts of your pages, it may be worth adding headings to important pages that are missing.
Futureinapps company is engaged in SEO website promotion for any business.
