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Do H1 tags mean anything anymore?

by nofearman
8 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Do H1 tags mean anything anymore? I noticed when I added an H1 tag to my site it drop for those keywords, and never recovered after a few weeks. Hence, I removed the tags. Just wondering if Google values them anymore?
#anymore #tags
  • Profile picture of the author TristanPerry
    Yes, they are probably the most important aspect of on-page SEO.

    Your rankings probably dropped for another reason, not due to the <h1> tag.
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  • Profile picture of the author angilina
    I think H1 or H2 etc tags do not have much impact [that is: H tags alone cannot help sites to rank good in SERPs]. If you have a heading, you can use it. But it will not help a lot [but they may help a little] in SEO. The real thing is the quality of content on the page and the quality/quantity of backlinks.
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    • Profile picture of the author HCLee
      The common practice would be to have your content title enclosed in a <h1> tagwhile containing your main search term or keyword within it.
      Then, each sub section of your content should title with a <h2> tag and and possibly containing a suggested keyword by Google. This facilitate not just the crawling and understanding for the search engines but it also
      shows what your site is all about, it will also help you have more structured content, which in turn tends to increase your visitors experience on site
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  • Profile picture of the author Rendix
    SEO is like baking a cake.. you need all of the little elements to make a great one. You don't skip any of the "ingredients". <h1> tags are among the top 10, hell 5 even, ways of optimizing a site for a particular keyphrase.


    Er,... yes.
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    • Profile picture of the author nofearman
      That was always my experience for the past 13 years, but I am sensing based on my own testing of several sites the influence of H tagging may be floundering, not as valuable as once was.
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      • Profile picture of the author The Expert
        I read an article over at SEOMoz a month ago which said H1 was recently eval'd in a test they ran and the severly depreciated it based on their results. H2 & H3 were even less valueable.(on the other hand, they found the Title Tag to be the most important)

        That being said I always make sure I have a unique H1 which reflects my content, has my keyword in it, and is similar but varied from my Title tag. I also work my keyword into my meta description and meta keywords, even though they are officially not recognized by Google as part of their evaluation of a page. I do it anyway.

        I want everything on every page to connect up properly. Every element. Period.
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        • Profile picture of the author seoconsult1
          The reason to dropped your ranking is H1 I agree for that but that's not mean that h1 tag is not important or any bad impact for that.

          Most of the SEO used h1, 2,3 tag as a bold tag but its not that thing.

          H1 mean Heading Tag. So always use it on top of the page and use primary keywords in it. Then H2 and here you use secondary keywords. And then h3, h4 with less priority keywords.

          But remember that these tag show on the page in this format.

          1. h1
          2. h2
          3. h3
          4. h4

          Not that
          1. H1
          2. h3
          3. h5
          4. h2

          So careful when you using this tag.
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  • Profile picture of the author TristanPerry
    It's interesting to think that they may be valuing it less However as long as they don't penalise for its use (which I severely doubt they would), I'll keep using it.

    This is because the heading tags help with semantic code and increase accessibility for disabled users.
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