This week’s blog is all about H1 tags. 

Stay tuned as we unpack what they are and how to use them. We’ll also offer some examples of both good and bad H1 content, to help empower you to properly write them for your own product or business!

What is an H1 Tag?

An H1 tag is an HTML heading that’s used to mark up a webpage’s main subject. In a webpage’s code, you’ll see the H1 text wrapped in <h1> tags. They follow a hierarchy from <h1> to <h6>. 

Why the hierarchy?

The H1 tag is considered to be the most important, when compared to other headings. Why? H1 tags tell us exactly what the page is about, subsequently helping search engines to understand the page better as well. 

Additionally, the H1 tag improves the user experience in the sense that it’s  part of a web page’s hierarchical structure, and is the most prominent heading on the page. 

H1 Best Practices 

Now that we’ve talked about why the H1 tag is so important, let’s help you to use it as a tool. Here are some best practices:

• Use H1 tags for page titles.
• Use an H1 tag on every important page on your website.
• Use only one H1 per page.
• Keep H1 tags short.
• Style headings for hierarchy.
• Include your target keyword in H1 tags whenever possible.

H1 Tag Examples

In order to fully understand what makes some H1 tags better than others, let's take a look at some examples of H1 tags that could be improved upon:

First off, at its most basic level, the H1 tag should describe what the content is all about. Sometimes the H1 tag is used as the title tag, but usually, it serves as the title of your blog post or article.

In the above example, “Shipping & Delivery” is the title of the page. It tells us what the page is about, yet they have used an H2 tag instead of an H1 tag. This goes against our aforementioned best practices of hierarchy:

Secondly, the H1 tag should, at the very least, contain relevant keywords and whenever possible, the first word/words in the H1 tag should be keywords themselves.

Let’s take a look at another example:

The above image was pulled from a mockup of potential H1 tags for a family business. As you can see, the website is for a vineyard and the wines that they make and sell. 

The “Current H1 tag” column shows the H1 tag that this company is currently using. In the first slot, we see: “Crafted with Experience”.

In your opinion, does this tag accurately describe what the page is specifically about? Not really, right? It just doesn’t say much about the page or the product, and we can tell that it’s probably not working for the business, because it has 0 searches per month. 

So what changes could we make, in order to make it more representative of the page/product and therefore, more useful for the company? First off, it’s a good idea to add some relevant keywords. Here are some examples: 

• “Napa Valley Wine”  - 5400 monthly searches
• “Quilt Wine” - 3600 monthly searches.

As you can see in the “new suggested H1 tag” section in the above image, utilizing these keywords will not only bring more traffic to the company’s page, but it will also make it easier for customers to understand what the pages are actually about. 

Additionally, remember that H1 tags should be easy to read and be aligned with the actual content of the page. If they’re not, they run the risk of being difficult for both search engines and human readers to understand, leaving both parties more likely to ignore the page. 

Conclusion

H1 tags can work heavily in your favor if you know how to use them. Make sure that you’re staying up to date with the newest available best practices, and check back here at Slicedbread Agency routinely  – we’ll always keep you in the know!