Multiple H1 Headings: How to Handle Them for SEO & Accessibility?



In this episode of Ask Google Webmasters, John Mueller discusses how to handle multiple H1 headings and accessibility, and whether multiple H1 headings work with Google systems.

Send us your questions on Twitter with the hashtag AskGooglebot and your question might be answered!
Google Search Central on Twitter → https://goo.gle/3f4Z0a8

Watch more AskGooglebot episodes → https://goo.gle/2OjWcvS
Subscribe to Google Search Central → https://goo.gle/SearchCentral

#AskGooglebot

source

35 thoughts on “Multiple H1 Headings: How to Handle Them for SEO & Accessibility?”

  1. Do not assume that Google reads the whole page or understands it – it is a faulty program not a human… It was proven EXPERIMENTALLY by Kyle Roof in 2018 that Google does NOT read or understand your whole page – he ranked a page of Latin gibberish on position 1 just by placing keywords at the important locations. You make the limited Google "algorithm" i.e. program understand your page by putting keywords in your headings like H1 and H2. Having multiple H1 with multiple keywords will definitely confuse the Google program and hurt your SEO. Not having headings at all will make Google having no clue what your page is about and what to rank you for.

  2. For "fixed" dialogs displayed on the page, like a "cookie consent banner" or "subscribe to notifications", what is the recommended tag for the title? Is it correct to use h1 to separate it from the main content? Or another tag is more appropriate?

  3. Well… I suggest John to read or remove this section in the Google Webmaster Stating Guide: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184
    Avoid
    Excessive use of heading tags on a page.

    Very long headings.

    Using heading tags only for styling text and not presenting structure.

    I understand that Google can deal with tons of H1 or even without any Heading on the page; but the question behind remains, should we be aligned to Google Webmaster Starting Guide or John Mueller communications?
    If a IT guy says: I put 20 <H1> on this page, what is the good answer from an SEO recommendation point of view? 1) Great! You rock! or 2) According to the Start Guide, you should keep the H1 to the main page topic and switch all other H1 to H2….

  4. In other words, Google does not use accessibility as a ranking factor and probably never will. Hence accessibility will NOT lead to better SEO. Google only cares about the majority of web users. People with disabilities need to wait for the SupremeCourt / #Dominos suit for justice!

  5. Hmm… He's being ambiguous about it.

    What he was basically saying is mark up your site any way you want for humans and not for search engines. The Google algorithm will see your page the way humans do. Use multiple H1s if you like but one of them has to be dominant in terms of visual layout to establish what the whole page is about.

  6. You completely skipped the hidden part. Does that mean it's ok to hide the text from showing or not? This is used quite often to replace the "header text" with an image. I've read that's bad. Based on this video it's not.

  7. This is a dumb question. Why should Google care how your headings are done? They've made it clear repeatedly that the content of your site most determines how SEO is handled for your site. How it's structured internally shouldn't really even be a factor. That said, HTML coders should be advised to use a single H1 on a page, and sub-headers for other, less important sub-topics. It's not rocket science, folks.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top