Does the H1 Tag Really Matter?

Ian C · 04-09-2007, 07:00 AM

Hi all,

A while back on another forum I got into a debate with a well respected SEO about the value of the H tags. I take the stand that the H1 tag is one of the more important tags for SEO purposes (right after the title tag).

She on the other hand felt that H tags didn't really matter at all and that offset text was what the search engines were really looking for. So I'm curious... how important do you folks feel the h1 tag is from an SEO point of view?

All the best...

Ian C

Johan007 · 04-09-2007, 08:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ian C

...felt that H tags didn't really matter at all and that offset text was what the search engines were really looking for.

What does "offset text" mean. There is studies that show H1 is has a significant weight over other on page tags and second only to the title tag.

Time for an experiment? Set some pages up and lets have a look?

Comenius · 04-09-2007, 09:20 AM

According to the good folks at SEOmoz, who interviewed lots of the big names in the SEO industry, H1 tags are important:

http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

Ian C · 04-09-2007, 09:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johan007

What does "offset text" mean. There is studies that show H1 is has a significant weight over other on page tags and second only to the title tag.

Time for an experiment? Set some pages up and lets have a look?

Hi Johan, an example of offset text would be:

text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text

offset text

text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text

Any text that is separated from the rest in some distinct way. I also have read and believe that the H1 tag has some SEO weight.

Ian C · 04-09-2007, 10:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Comenius

According to the good folks at SEOmoz, who interviewed lots of the big names in the SEO industry, H1 tags are important:

http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

Ok, I'm glad to see that it's not just me who feels this way. I got into a bit of a debate over this point with this particular industry expert. But as I am not myself an expert I didn't want to push the point.

Best wishes...

Ian C

mortgages · 04-09-2007, 10:14 AM

Don't forget h2 tags as well. All these things have a purpose and there is no point leaving them out, ...even if you are just using them for styling.

James.

Johan007 · 04-09-2007, 10:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Comenius

According to the good folks at SEOmoz, who interviewed lots of the big names in the SEO industry, H1 tags are important.

Erm no they don't! do they...?

Quote:

Eric Ward
Depends on the topic of the site and the word in the tag. Having a site about industrial washers with a <H1>Britney Spears</H1> tag is not going to help.

Aaron Wall
May hurt your rankings if it is too well aligned with the page title and anchor text. If templating issues cause too much duplication in a large section of a website it may also lead to reduced crawling.

Ben Pfeiffer
Not as important as it once was as a ranking factor, but still necessary on a well optimized page and very useful for organizing page content.

Jill Whalen
Keywords H tags in and of themselves don't seem to really matter as my tests have shown that positions don't seem to change whether the headline is wrapped in an H tag or not.

However I think they are.

cessai · 04-09-2007, 11:09 AM

H Tags are indeed important. It emphasizes the most important text from the less important ones

Comenius · 04-09-2007, 01:05 PM

Yeah I guess the quotes at SEOmoz could be interpreted either way.

I took them to mean they're helpful if used intelligently, but not by any means the only thing to worry about.

ninjashoes · 04-09-2007, 01:30 PM

I think if you dont have a meta description then H1 tages are used in their place in a way.

Not totally sure about this though..

**ToddW** · 04-09-2007, 01:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cessai

H Tags are indeed important. It emphasizes the most important text from the less important ones

Exactly, don't just concentrate on H1 you need to use more than that

H1 H2 H3 etc.

**ToddW** · 04-09-2007, 01:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ninjashoes

I think if you dont have a meta description then H1 tages are used in their place in a way.

Not totally sure about this though..

For google if you don't have META DESCRIPTION tag then the first X# of chars. are used as your page's description.

Johan007 · 04-09-2007, 03:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ninjashoes

I think if you dont have a meta description then H1 tages are used in their place in a way.

Not totally sure about this though..

I am sure meta description has no weight unless you mean Ian's "offset" text then yes that would be next to take over rank however H1 to start your content helps users of screen readers jump directly to the content so has usability benefits.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ToddW

Exactly, don't just concentrate on H1 you need to use more than that

H1 H2 H3 etc.

I am sure H2 and H3 if marked up semantically correct document structure should in theory help but there is no proof. For this reason I am going to dismiss seomoz.org article even though I respect the opinion of experience it seems they have done very little testing and can conclude contradictions in the entire article.

seowoman · 04-09-2007, 03:23 PM

Re: that SEOmoz study, they had 38 experts rank various SEO factors, and there was "average agreement" that the H1 tag is of "high importance". Out of the 38 people who voted, it's odd that they chose four quotes that don't reflect a status of "high importance".

Johan007 · 04-09-2007, 03:29 PM

Quote:

Caveman
Best used to reinforce a page's most important theme. Exact duplication between title, META Description and H1 can cause trouble. We have tons of highly ranking pages with NO Hx tags at all.

There are more quotes when clicking on "Show the rest of the comments"! I used to think <h1> counts for allot however I am not so sure in Google anymore as there is site with similar content and text to mine ranking quite well with no H1 tags. A small scale experiment years ago proved H1 had some weight but I have a feeling experimentation needs to carried out... I am sure it has in private.

I actually have a feeling H1 is no longer of "high importance" but surely it must be presumed better than "offset text", maybe by a very small factor now?

Quote:

Caveman
Best used to reinforce a page's most important theme. Exact duplication between title, META Description and H1 can cause trouble. We have tons of highly ranking pages with NO Hx tags at all.

"Best used to reinforce" is what I thought but Caveman goes on to say duplication META Description as absolutely weird.

temyong · 04-10-2007, 04:44 AM

I also use H1 in posting at online classifieds.

coolguy27 · 04-10-2007, 04:53 AM

Yes, it really matters 'coz header tag (Hx) is one of google ranking factors onpage optimization according to this link : http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/inte...ng-factors.htm

It emphasizes your important text or your keywords.....

majali · 04-10-2007, 06:24 AM

Very importan

Johan007 · 04-10-2007, 06:54 AM

No real evidence in the provided links and from what I can see in the SERPS <H1> no longer matters as much.

colorexpertsbd · 04-10-2007, 07:57 AM

I have seen a lot of problems with webmasters complaining that CSS formating ruined their Search Result Ranks. But, that shouldn't be the case. In most cases, it was found that they embedded the H1 tags in their CSS definition, which made Google to understand that the site has no H1 tags.

However, when they started to delete the H1 definitions in CSS files and modify the format in the pages with H1 tags, they saw good results.