Can you boost your Google search rankings by incorporating relevant keywords into your H1 tags?
In any case, how many H1 tags should you use per page?
There has been much debate and misunderstanding about how Google perceives H1 content over the years.
So, are H1 tags a ranking factor for Google? Let’s wait and see what happens.
According to the claim, H1 tags are a ranking factor
There have been numerous “best practices” and recommendations regarding H1 tags over the years. Among them are the following:
- You should use a lot of keyword-loaded H1 tags if you want to rank higher for specific keywords.
- If you use more than one H1 tag per webpage, Google will penalize you. (By algorithmic downgrading? A verbal reprimand? In the town square, fifty wet noodle lashes?).
- Use your primary keyword at the beginning of your H1 tag, secondary keywords in the H2 tags, and so on to tell Google what terms you want to rank for.
- There should only be one H1 tag on the page, and it should be the first text element.
I don’t blame you if you’re perplexed by the contradictory information on this topic.
After all, this is the featured snippet for [how to use H1 tags] at the time of writing:
As you’ll see below, this contradicts everything Google has said about H1 tags for years.
Let’s take a look at what’s been happening on both sides of this debate.
Evidence as a Ranking Factor for H1 Tags
For this timeline, we’ll rely heavily on Roger Montti’s research into how Google’s perception and weighting of H1 tags have evolved over time. Among his most important discoveries:
1998
As evidenced by the following excerpt from Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s research paper, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine:
“For most popular subjects, a simple text matching search that is restricted to webpage titles performs admirably when PageRank prioritizes the results.”
2003-2004
Font size, which was originally used to determine a word’s importance, gave way to HTML structure as a ranking algorithm.
We got an early look at how Google used HTML markup to inform the algorithm’s understanding of semantic structure in the patent, Google patent Document ranking based on semantic distance between terms in a document.
Read Why Owning a Home is Actually a Bad Investment.
Bill Slawski examined this patent in 2010 and explained:
“One part of the process behind this approach involves a search engine analyzing the HTML structures on a page, looking for elements such as titles and headings on a page… In other words, the search engine is attempting to locate and understand visual structures on a page that might be semantically meaningful, such as a list of items associated with a heading.”
2005-2011
H1 tags were widely regarded as a Google ranking factor – and optimizing them a key SEO tactic. I know this because I used to get a small cut of the revenue and even some ghostwriting gigs for articles on sites like Suite101, WikiHow, HubPages, and others.
Optimized H1 and H2 tags, keyword density, and formulaic content ruled the day. Volume was far more important to content creators than the quality or utility of the content produced because these articles were used to build links and drive traffic for revenue sharing.
And I can confirm that by using these strategies, I was able to rank #1 for topics and keywords for which I had no business ranking (mesothelioma, anyone?).
Google Panda was introduced in 2011 in response to legitimate publishers’ outrage. Those methods were no longer effective and could even harm your website’s rankings.
Simply inquire with Demand Media.
For those sites that were wiped out by the Panda algorithm, Google revealed 23 questions that help the search engine determine the authority of a piece of content.
The user experience was prioritized – and my revenue share payments from content farms eventually stopped.
Let’s jump ahead to…
2019
In a 2019 Google Webmaster Hangout, John Mueller explained that Google uses HTML tags to better understand the webpage and its content. It makes no difference how many H1 tags you use, he says, adding:
“Your site is going to rank perfectly fine with no H1 tags or with five H1 tags.
…H1 elements are a great way to give more structure to a page so that users and search engines can understand which parts of a page are kind of under different headings.
…especially with HTML5, having multiple H1 elements on a page is completely normal and kind of expected.”
Aside: If you’re wondering how many H1 tags to use on a page, read this debunking of the myth that Google prefers only one H1 per page.
In a Google Webmaster Central video, 2020 Mueller answered a question about H1 tags. He stated explicitly that headings were a ranking factor, saying:
“Headings on a page help us to better understand the content on the page. Headings on the page are not the only ranking factor that we have — we look at the content on its own, as well.
But sometimes having a clear heading on the page gives us a little bit more information on what that section is about.”
He went on to say that headings can be especially useful in assisting Google in understanding the content and context of an image.
2021
In August, there was a lot of buzz about Google rewriting title tags for a small number of pages in search results. The text from the H1 tag was frequently used as the new title on the search engine results page (SERP).
The Argument Against Using H1 Tags as a Ranking Factor
Google was well aware of spammy tactics involving H1 tags as early as 2009. For example, Matt Cutts, then-head of Google’s Webspam Team, warned in this video for Google Search Central:
“Don’t do all H1 and then use CSS to make it look like regular text, because we see people who are competitors complain about that. If users ever turn off the CSS or the CSS doesn’t load, it looks really bad.”
He stated at the time that it was acceptable to use “a little H1 here and a little H1 there,” but that it should be used for what it was intended for: headings.
He went on to say:
“…if you try to throw H1 everywhere on a page, people have tried to abuse that and so our algorithms try to take that into account. So it doesn’t really do you that much good.”
SEO professionals, like so many other good things, have beaten that horse to death by gaming the system.
H1 Tags As A Ranking Factor: Our Verdict
In the early days of SEO, on-page text elements were heavily weighted factors in the Google search algorithm.
The specific words used, their placement on the page, and the font size in which they appeared indicated to Google the importance of those words. That is how Google determined a webpage’s relevance to a given query.
Google used that because it didn’t have much else to do in the late ’90s and early ’00s.
H1 factors, like so many previous ranking factors, were quickly identified as a simple way to manipulate rankings. Over-optimizing H1s drew the Spam Team’s attention, resulting in their devaluation.
H1 tags and other structural HTML elements continue to help Google understand how users perceive the content on any given webpage. They continue to aid Google in determining a webpage’s relevance and semantic structure.
They assist the algorithm in determining what the page is about, who it is intended for, and why it is or isn’t the best answer for any given query.
Mueller confirmed that Google ranks pages based on their headings.
That being said, it isn’t particularly significant on its own. Using H1 to game the SERPs by using a lot of them, stuffing them with keywords, or attempting to hide an entire page of H1 with CSS does not work.
Not any longer, in fact.
When it comes to on-page optimization, the user experience should always come first.
This is what Google prioritizes, and it applies to your H1 tags as well as the quality of your content, image optimization, and other factors.
Learn more from SEO and read 57 SEO Insights From Google’s John Mueller.
