Is this a title or H1 tag? --- <h1 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline">

by Murkr
18 replies
  • SEO
  • |
Hello, so i created my first SEO oriented webpage and i got a question about title and H1 tags.

When i created the page, i wrote the page title but left out H1 tags on the content of the page.

But, when i looked at the page source im noticing this

<h1 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline"> **then the page title** </h1>

Im confused because it says both H1 and title in this tag. so which one is it? this is what i wrote for the page title not for my H1 because i left my H1 out.

so that is my title tag correct?

i want to get this question out of the way because now i plan to edit the page and add in a H1 tag, and i dont want 2 H1 tags on the page so i want to make sure that is the title and not somehow both the title+h1 in one tag
#&lth1 #<h1 #classentrytitle #itempropheadline> #tag #title
  • Profile picture of the author ABN
    Page title has its own tag that is in the head of the document.
    <html>
    <head>
    <title>This is the title of the page</title>

    The H1 is a heading tag. There should only be 1 of the title and an h1 on your page. To optimize, they should both contain your focus keyword(s)

    It may be confusing because of <h1 class="entry-title" but that is only a class name for styling purposes.

    Hope that helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author mariajerek
    Originally Posted by Murkr View Post

    Hello, so i created my first SEO oriented webpage and i got a question about title and H1 tags.

    When i created the page, i wrote the page title but left out H1 tags on the content of the page.

    But, when i looked at the page source im noticing this

    <h1 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline"> **then the page title** </h1>

    Im confused because it says both H1 and title in this tag. so which one is it? this is what i wrote for the page title not for my H1 because i left my H1 out.

    so that is my title tag correct?

    i want to get this question out of the way because now i plan to edit the page and add in a H1 tag, and i dont want 2 H1 tags on the page so i want to make sure that is the title and not somehow both the title+h1 in one tag
    This code is use for page title.
    <title>Example</title>
    And for header tags we use : <h1>Example</h1>, <h2>example1</h2>
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  • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
    Originally Posted by Murkr View Post

    so that is my title tag correct?
    I haven't got a clue because you didn't post a title tag. However, your h1 looks just fine.

    HTML tags can have several attributes. Class is typically used for CSS and styling, and doesn't carry any additional meaning. Itemprop is probably a part of your schema settings. It's there to describe your product/page for the SEs.
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    • Profile picture of the author Murkr
      [DELETED]
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      • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
        Originally Posted by Murkr View Post

        that was my title. when i write a title and then look at the page source that is what shows up. so your saying this tag right above here is an H1 tag and not a title tag?
        No, that's the H1 heading tag. On a very basic level <title> is the one you can see as the title in the Google search results, and in the tab bar of your browser. H1 is the one that typically sits at the top of your page.

        Again, the name in the class attribute doesn't mean anything. You can have anything in there. If you have <h1 class="footer title pr10 seo dinosaur batman"> it doesn't mean that your heading becomes footer, the title tag, or batman. Well, unless you've got .batman defined in your CSS...

        Even though I'm a WordPress site builder I don't care what words WordPress developers have decided to use. They've got some confusing terminology for sure.

        H1 and title are quite often the same. If you wan't to set <title> to something else I'd suggest Yoast SEO, All in one SEO pack, or one of the other well-known SEO plugins. They add a box where you can edit <title> text.
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        Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
        Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Originally Posted by Murkr View Post

    Hello, so i created my first SEO oriented webpage and i got a question about title and H1 tags.

    When i created the page, i wrote the page title but left out H1 tags on the content of the page.

    But, when i looked at the page source im noticing this

    <h1 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline"> **then the page title** </h1>

    Im confused because it says both H1 and title in this tag. so which one is it? this is what i wrote for the page title not for my H1 because i left my H1 out.

    so that is my title tag correct?

    i want to get this question out of the way because now i plan to edit the page and add in a H1 tag, and i dont want 2 H1 tags on the page so i want to make sure that is the title and not somehow both the title+h1 in one tag


    Edit your webpage source code If you don't want the page <title> text showing up as the <h1> text. If it's a CMS like Wordpress, edit the <h1> in the theme file/s.
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    • Profile picture of the author Murkr
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      Edit your webpage source code If you don't want the page <title> text showing up as the <h1> text. If it's a CMS like Wordpress, edit the <h1> in the theme file/s.
      Anyway you can post a tutorial how to do this? Yes im using wordpress. im a beginner, i understand what your saying, but i dont know where to begin to do this task.

      Also will i have to do this to every page?

      PS: as it is right now, that page has two h1 tags correct?
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by Murkr View Post

        Anyway you can post a tutorial how to do this? Yes im using wordpress. im a beginner, i understand what your saying, but i dont know where to begin to do this task.

        Also will i have to do this to every page?

        PS: as it is right now, that page has two h1 tags correct?


        I'm sure there's plenty of related tutorials on Google Search (ex: how to edit wordpress theme code).

        If you can get a copy of your Wordpress theme offline on your PC desktop then you could use something like Notepad++ (free text editor) to search the entire WP theme for all instances of <h1> tags, in your case search for the closing </h1> tag. The link below has an unrelated tutorial I made a while back but it does explain in detail how to use Notepad++ to quickly scan a WP theme.

        Since it's Wordpress it's most likely a single edit on one theme file to clean up the default <h1> tag.

        Personally I would never have more than one <h1> tag on my pages. I also wouldn't have an <h1> with the <title> text. The <h> tags are equivalent to <title> tags so use them sparingly & use them as If they're SERP titles to target multiple variations of your keyword/s to help increase CTR (click through rate).
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      • Profile picture of the author irawr
        Banned
        Originally Posted by Murkr View Post

        Anyway you can post a tutorial how to do this? Yes im using wordpress. im a beginner, i understand what your saying, but i dont know where to begin to do this task.

        Also will i have to do this to every page?

        PS: as it is right now, that page has two h1 tags correct?
        This isn't an SEO question, this is a basic HTML question.

        Code:
        <h1 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline">Roof Leak Repair Services | The Roofing Company</h1>
        That's your first h1 tag, it has a CSS class of entry-title

        Code:
        <h1 style="text-align: center;">Do You Need A Reliable Roof Leak Repair Contractor?</h1>
        This is a second h1 tag and it should be an h2 tag, not an h1 tag, since it's a child tag of the h1. There should only be 1 h1 tag on a page, but that h1 tag can have multiple child h2 tags.
        Code:
        <title>Roof Leak Repair Services | The Roofing Company - The Roofing Company | Re-Roof | Roof Repair | Storm Damage</title>
        There's the title tag.

        Go find a tutorial on how to edit wordpress themes, again, this is not an SEO question.
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        • Profile picture of the author yukon
          Banned
          Originally Posted by irawr View Post

          This isn't an SEO question, this is a basic HTML question.

          No offense but I have to laugh when folks don't think HTML is part of SEO.
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          • Profile picture of the author irawr
            Banned
            Originally Posted by yukon View Post

            No offense but I have to laugh when folks don't think HTML is part of SEO.
            I guess I did not properly explain myself.

            Originally Posted by yukon View Post

            Personally I would never have more than one <h1> tag on my pages. I also wouldn't have an <h1> with the <title> text. The <h> tags are equivalent to <title> tags so use them sparingly & use them as If they're SERP titles to target multiple variations of your keyword/s to help increase CTR.
            https://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/Use_h1_for_Title

            The h1 tag represents the top level, so having multiple h1s could cause problems far beyond SEO. I do understand what you are saying, but this is along the lines of a question like "Should I use the BODY tag for SEO?" No, not for SEO, but you use it's because it's part of the HTML standard. I hope you get what I'm saying, this isn't a question about style and what is better for SEO. Most browsers and spiders bust the document up into DOM and may not have a standardized/consistent way to deal with multiple h1s.

            Multiple h1s was an ancient way to stuff keywords, so I really doubt Google is going to love your website if you have multiple h1s, then again, maybe it doesn't care. I'm not sure because it's technically not a valid HTML document and I admit, having valid HTML does certainly play a role in SEO, but it's so surface level that it's hard for me to imagine that people screw it up.

            What I meant was, a real SEO question about tags would be: "Should I use multiple h2 tags or nest h3 tags into the h2 tags?" And the answer to that depends on the way the content is organized.

            Not really posting any of this for Yukon since I'm pretty sure he knows but hopefully this helps the OP.
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  • Profile picture of the author Murkr
    holy confusing shit batman! I feel like im being told to do many different things and im not sure if they're all trying fix my problem, one person in a PM told me to create a child theme, I was starting to look into that then I read this thread and its telling me to do something different.

    Yes I def don't want two H1's either, but I want to write my own H1 text, not have my page title automatically turn the title into a H1.

    Let me reiterate my problem. I want to create a page, and when I write the title of the page and some content I don't want my title to automatically create a H1 tag like its doing now. That's it.

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Okay Yukon, so you said: "Edit your webpage source code If you don't want the page <title> text showing up as the <h1> text. "

    But then you said "Since it's Wordpress it's most likely a single edit on one theme file to clean up the default <h1> tag. "

    So do I have to edit the webpage source on each page or can I do the single edit on the theme like you said in this later message?

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    You said "edit the <h1> in the theme file/s." I don't understand what to edit them too, or just delete them. Think of someone being completely new to all this, I understand what your saying but I don't know which file to edit, and what to edit it to.

    What would be best practice from an SEO standpoint here? Should I delete

    <h1 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline">Roof Leak Repair Services | The Roofing Company</h1>

    Altogether? Or should I change it to h3 or div or something.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Murkr View Post

      Okay Yukon, so you said: "Edit your webpage source code If you don't want the page <title> text showing up as the <h1> text. "

      But then you said “Since it's Wordpress it's most likely a single edit on one theme file to clean up the default <h1> tag. “

      So do I have to edit the webpage source on each page or can I do the single edit on the theme like you said in this later message?



      It's a CMS (Wordpress) one small group of theme files creates unlimited webpages.

      All WP themes aren't identical but If the problem code is on a blog Post webpage odds are you need to edit either the header.php or single.php theme file/s, assuming the developer followed standard WP practice or you're not using a WP plugin to do something funky with the <h1> tag.

      If you know HTML it's a 7 minute job, 9 If you take your time.
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    • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
      Originally Posted by Murkr View Post

      Yes I def don’t want two H1’s either, but I want to write my own H1 text, not have my page title automatically turn the title into a H1.
      It's easier to use the WordPress' title field for h1, and change the title tag with a SEO plugin. You know, the stuff I said before.

      If you want to use the editor component to input h1 for some reason just try to edit the header.php, post.php or page.php as was suggested above. Some themes such as StudioPress Genesis do not work this way, but at least you can try.

      Yes, having a child theme is considered the best practice because that way you can install updates to your core theme without the fear of overwriting your changes. This is easy stuff, and something you can Google. Child theme is sort of overriding your main theme's files: copy header.php to child theme's folder, and make changes to it.
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      Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
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      • Profile picture of the author Murkr
        Originally Posted by nettiapina View Post

        It's easier to use the WordPress' title field for h1, and change the title tag with a SEO plugin. You know, the stuff I said before.
        Is this what most of you do to fix the problem i am having? because this does seem easier.

        Plan:
        create a page, for the title write what i want as my H1. that will make my title and H1 the same.
        Then, go into SEO Yoast and change the title of the page through the SEO plugin.

        Resulting in title and H1 different variations of my targeted keyword.

        Sorry if i seem repetitive lol. Im a noob.
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  • Profile picture of the author Murkr
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by Murkr View Post

      Okay, so i just did what i said in the above post and I think it worked, but my SERP results dont look correct.

      check out the source of the page now
      Roof Leak Repair Services | The Roofing Company

      As you can see it only has one h1 tag that is now different than the title tag "which is what i wanted"

      So i edited the page title in Yoast to "Roof Leak Repair Services | The Roofing Company"

      But, when i google this:
      site:tampabayroofs.com/roof-repair/

      to see what it looks like in the SERP it doesnt match what i wrote in Yoast.

      i wanted the title to say:
      Roof Leak Repair Services | The Roofing Company

      but it says:
      Repairs - The Roofing Company

      Any idea why it says "Repairs - The Roofing Company" as the title of the page? i didnt write that anywhere, its like it picked that itself.
      Google does not instantly crawl and index sites. It might take them weeks to notice the change you made.
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      • Profile picture of the author Murkr
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        Google does not instantly crawl and index sites. It might take them weeks to notice the change you made.
        ohh yeahhhhhh, haha, rookie question

        okay thanks man.

        by weeks do you mean 1-2 or longer? Would pinging the page make any difference?
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        • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
          Originally Posted by Murkr View Post

          by weeks do you mean 1-2 or longer? Would pinging the page make any difference?
          Google seems to index pages quite fast, but these changes are not a priority. I've seen cases where some meta descriptions changed instantly and others took weeks to change, and that's on the same site.

          Please also note that Google does what they see fit. If your title is a list of keywords they will probably replace it, and use the main keyword or page "slug".
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          Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
          Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

          What's your excuse?
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          • Profile picture of the author Murkr
            Originally Posted by nettiapina View Post

            Google seems to index pages quite fast, but these changes are not a priority. I've seen cases where some meta descriptions changed instantly and others took weeks to change, and that's on the same site.

            Please also note that Google does what they see fit. If your title is a list of keywords they will probably replace it, and use the main keyword or page "slug".
            I think this is what happened in my case because what the title currently is in google is something i did not write myself. I didnt feel like i stuffed it with keywords though so that is unfortunate.

            Edit: looks like it only took a couple days, now it has updated to the title i wrote! yipppyyyyy
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