What is the H1 tag for and how to set it up?
Definition
H1 is a HTML tag that indicates a title of a webpage’s content. There six different levels of these tags - h1, h2, etc. The h1 is considered the most important tag and the h6 is the least important.
Unlike the title tag, the H1 is visible on the page, see "women's shoes" :
The h1 tag is not necessarily made visible to users on a web page, because it depends on the style of the page. However, since this tag corresponds to the main subject of the page, it is expected that the h1 would be highlighted and very easily identifiable "with the naked eye", as for example below : “Shoes”
But be careful, this is not always the case: to be sure, you can use a plugin to expect a given page.
Why is the H1 tag important in SEO?
The H1 tag is the second tag that Google will read after the title tag. The keywords found there ensure the understanding of the content, making this tag one of the most important!
How to optimize it for SEO?
The 3 main criteria of the H1 tag
It must contain the main keyword of your query
Size: There is no hard and fast rule, but try not to exceed 70 to 100 characters: the h1 is supposed to be a title, not a paragraph 🙂 If it is too long, the page may be flagged by Google's anti-spam algorithm.
Uniqueness: Have only one h1 tag per page. This one must be unique on your site: each page must address a specific topic.
Useful recommendations for optimizing your <h1> tag
Avoid using words that don't make sense to Google. For example, if the dress you are offering has a name "Marie" in your catalog, writing "Marie pumps" doesn't make sense, while "red patent pumps" makes much more sense.
Try to indicate what makes your product unique compared to other products in the same category: the size? the color? the material? a serial number?
Try to place an H1 different from the title tag. If there are very few possible ways to rephrase it, it's not a big deal, but the ideal scenario is to differentiate it because it allows you to use the keyword’s semantics on 2 different tags.
How to set it up?
To create or modify the tag, you will just have to modify the HTML code of your page, in the <head> tag which corresponds to the header of the HTML document.
Overall:
Most of the time, if you use a CMS (content management system), you just have to change it in the GUI (User interface)
If you use a CMS like WordPress for content management, often the h1 is the title of the article by default.
Otherwise, it is usually enough in your text editor to choose the "Title 1", which will correspond to your h1 (often CMS, in an effort to simplify for the writer, do not use technical terms but propose a classification that shows that an h1 is bigger and more important than an h2, itself more important than an h3 ...).
For an e-merchant:
If it is an e-commerce or a marketplace site, it is often simpler and recommended to automate the creation of your H1 tags, following preset rules according to the types of pages: product page, category page, etc.
You know everything about the H1 tag, it's up to you to optimize your pages!