Can We have Two H1 Tags on a Page

Introduction

H1 tags are the HTML tags that are used as the main heading for a web page. They are also called “Top level headings.” The h1 tags are the most important elements of on-page SEO. This is because they tell the search engine the content’s topic. It creates a hierarchal page structure that will make the content easier to understand.

And if your content is easy to understand and your website easy to navigate, then the search engines improve your page engagement and decrease the bounce rate. As for a user, the h1 tag appears on the top in large and bold letters.

Earlier website designers used a markup language called HTML4 to create websites. Now they use HTML5. This is the updated version of HTML4. After the launch of HTML5, the SEO community had a debate about whether there would be an impact of headings in search results ranking.

People who were against this thought said:

• Using two h1 can indicate keyword stuffing and be considered the Black Hat SEO.
• Having two h1 can confuse the search engine about your focused keyword.
• It will lead to an unintentional flat page outline due to a lack of Proper heading.
• Multiple h1 can also confuse users, and they will bounce back from your website.

And people who supported multiple H1 Tags said:

• Since there is one h1 tag at the top HTML tag allows the h1 tags to be used as a section divider.
• You can also use separate element tags like nav, aside, content and section tags to differentiate the main heading from other h1 and menu, sidebar etc., on the page.

Now whatever points were against the two h1 tags are based on HTML4. So as for now, you can use two h1 tags or more, and it won’t disrupt your white hat SEO strategy. It is also mentioned that having one clear heading on the top will not confuse google. Therefore google uses a single main header to understand the whole context of different parts of the page.

This also means that when you implement an SEO technique to help google crawl and index the content, there are many approaches that you can use to organize your content. During this time, search engines have learned to adapt HTML header differences across different platforms like WordPress, Wix and more.

So can We have Multiple H1 tags on a Single Page?

The answer to this is YES. You can have two h1 tags or more for a single content. So the first thing that the google algorithm looks at is the content. And it is enough to analyze the data in multiple ways.

Another thing is that Moz uses H2 as the main headline because of their CMS setup. And most of the time, web developers add multiple H1 tags to website plugins, templates and themes. So as a web designer, it is up to you whether you want to follow templates or remove extra H1s.

However, your goal should be to create a great user experience. Therefore, semantic tags are not essential but can make the crawling and indexing process easy. In addition, incorporating header tags will enhance your page structure. This enhancement later increases usability for both users and crawlers.

Conclusion

When HTML5 is compared to HTML4, it is confirmed that the new age is SEO is not much dependent on a single h1 tag to improve the page’s ranking. Instead, the overall point is to serve a better experience to your user, whether you are using one or two h1 tags or more.

Now it does not matter what direction you use. Search engines can interpret complex codes compared to older versions. Now you need to focus on creating good quality content without worrying about crawling and indexing.