H1 Tag Gets a Black Eye
In recent amusing yet accurate diatribes by Jill Whalen and presentations by Rand Fishkin, et al, the H1 tag has been taking a beating. Is the H1 tag really worthless?
Short answer: No. Rand in particular hasn’t specifically stated that the tag has no value. In fact, from a best practices standpoint, he recommends utilizing them. Will they improve your rankings? Short answer: Not likely. Do I recommend their use? Short answer: Yes.
Usability issues aside, perhaps their value lies in establishing the relevance of the page to the search query. This thinking can also be translated to sitemaps. Sitemaps do not improve your rank. However, they do provide the opportunity to rank by helping search engine bots find and subsequently index the page. A page that isn’t indexed can’t be ranked. The value of sitemaps is arguable and therefore best left to another article but the analogy is helpful in establishing the importance of the H1 tag.
What are your thoughts on the H1? Are they worthless junk, should they exist, or should they be trashed?
Comments :
How to get content in H1 tag to disappear?
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on 31 August, 2009 - 19:05.I want to use one H1 tag for SEO
but I don't want its contents to appear on the page.
suggestions?
A bad idea
Submitted by Greg Hill on 31 August, 2009 - 23:05.To answer your question, there are a number of methods to hide text. A couple of simple CSS techniques:
h1 { text-indent: -7999px; }or...
h1 { display: none; }However, it's usually a bad idea. While there are legitimate image replacement strategies including sIFR, hidden text is considered spam by search engines and if detected could result in your site being banned.
If your strategy is short-term then perhaps these concerns may not be important to you but the tactic would not pass a stakeholder's ethics test.