H1 Tag: The Guide to Optimizing Your SEO
Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2025 7:05 am
⏲ Reading time: 15 minutes
When I started working in the marketing sector, everything revolved around technical SEO and netlinking. Today, it's content creation that matters . So, in recent years, the content marketing sector has exploded! After discussing in a previous article how to optimize your title tags, I'm going to tackle something that is rarely discussed and is part of marketing strategies: h tags and in particular the h1 tag.
We often overlook our h1 tags, but know that they actually determine the success of your editorial strategy. The h1 tag is a true SEO tool that has been used since the beginning of SEO history. Paradoxically, we're so used to hearing about h1 tags and using them that we don't take enough time to think about and learn how to properly optimize them.
Learning how to write the perfect h1 tag will give you a quick and easy edge over your competitors. Especially since I'm convinced h1 tags are largely underestimated by many SEOs today.
In this article, you'll learn the exact method for writing the perfect h1 tag. A quick SEO optimization that will take your content strategy to the next level.
Speed Reading: What You Will Learn by Reading This Post
Definition of the H1 tag : title of your content.
Importance of the H1 tag : an important factor for natural referencing.
Title Optimization : 6 Techniques for Writing Optimized H1 Tags
Tool to control all your H1 tags : Screaming Frog.
TitleGate : Google uses the H1 tag on its results pages.
Want to know all the details about these points? Just read on!
What is an h1 tag?
The h1 tag is an HTML tag that indicates a title on a website. Your tag should contain the central keyword of your content.
Let’s see together what this means:
HTML : This acronym stands for HyperText Markup Language. Most websites use this language to create web pages.
Tag : An HTML tag is a snippet of code that tells the browser how to display content.
Heading : HTML has six different heading tags (h1, h2, h3, etc.). The h1 tag is considered the most important tag, and the h6 tag is the least important. Tags are often formatted according to their importance. Therefore, an H2 subheading will have more influence than an H3, and so on.
Description of the different tags, from 1 to 6
Here is an example of a title or h1 tag :
Hi, I'm a title!
Your move : Open any webpage—preferably a good-quality blog—and follow these instructions. First, make sure you're on a webpage.
Next, view the source code . To do this, you can right-click and click "view page source" or simply press CTRL + U.
To search for the h1 tag , press CTRL + F to open the search function in your browser. Again, I'm using Chrome, but most browsers use this keyboard shortcut. When I press CTRL + F, I see a small search bar appear in the upper-right corner of the browser window. Type "h1" there.
Then press the Enter key. Chrome highlights the h1 tag on this page. The text between the opening and closing tags is the title.
example to search for H1 tags in the source code of a page
And there you have it! It sounds simple enough, but the h1 tag has a big impact , as you'll discover in the next section.
So why are h1 tags so important?
H1 tags have always been a major ranking factor . The h1 tag has never lost its importance; it is an important SEO topic. In Moz's latest SEO ranking factor survey, tags are the third most influential group of SEO ranking factors.
H1 headings are typically the most visually striking content on a web page. This is probably the most important feature of H1 tags. At first glance, this benefit may not seem to be related to SEO.
Why? Because it's more about optimizing the user experience than it is about technically optimizing the web page. It is! But that's the direction SEO has been taking in recent years. SEO is actually more focused on user experience than search engine optimization. So don't forget to optimize the user experience. It's very important!
H1 tags are one of the most important SEO and UX elements.
Now, let's see how to use h1 tags properly .
How to write effective h1 tags?
Writing quality h1 tags isn't complicated . The fact is, just about anyone with basic SEO or HTML knowledge uses these types of tags. 80% of search results appearing on the first page of Google use an h1 tag.
So why bother writing an article on the subject? Because most people use them incorrectly !
Here benin phone number data are the rules for writing h1 tags . Follow these guidelines and you'll get great h1 tags every time.
1. Use only one h1 heading.
Each page only needs one h1 tag. Why? If they're so effective, why not add more?
Each web page only needs one h1 tag and one main heading. There's no reason to use more than one h1 tag . A search engine may index multiple h1 tags on a single web page, but it's better to focus on one phrase or keyword. Having more than one h1 heading won't necessarily confuse the search engine, but it could weaken your SEO efforts.
Some SEO specialists choose to use multiple h1 tags, but in my experience keeping only one main heading gives better SEO results .
2. Your h1 tag should describe the topic of your web page
The h1 tag should describe the content. Often, the h1 tag will be similar to your main heading and will match the title of your post. It should give the reader a clear idea of what they are going to read .
The h1 tag should be between 20 and 70 characters long . But don't focus too much on the length of the h1 tag. It's not as important as it used to be. The only reason I mention it is because h1 tags that are too short are a waste of space and SEO opportunities. But be careful, a tag that is too long may produce less SEO effect. A medium length (20 to 70 characters) is perfectly appropriate. A normal-sized sentence will work just fine.
When I started working in the marketing sector, everything revolved around technical SEO and netlinking. Today, it's content creation that matters . So, in recent years, the content marketing sector has exploded! After discussing in a previous article how to optimize your title tags, I'm going to tackle something that is rarely discussed and is part of marketing strategies: h tags and in particular the h1 tag.
We often overlook our h1 tags, but know that they actually determine the success of your editorial strategy. The h1 tag is a true SEO tool that has been used since the beginning of SEO history. Paradoxically, we're so used to hearing about h1 tags and using them that we don't take enough time to think about and learn how to properly optimize them.
Learning how to write the perfect h1 tag will give you a quick and easy edge over your competitors. Especially since I'm convinced h1 tags are largely underestimated by many SEOs today.
In this article, you'll learn the exact method for writing the perfect h1 tag. A quick SEO optimization that will take your content strategy to the next level.
Speed Reading: What You Will Learn by Reading This PostDefinition of the H1 tag : title of your content.
Importance of the H1 tag : an important factor for natural referencing.
Title Optimization : 6 Techniques for Writing Optimized H1 Tags
Tool to control all your H1 tags : Screaming Frog.
TitleGate : Google uses the H1 tag on its results pages.
Want to know all the details about these points? Just read on!
What is an h1 tag?The h1 tag is an HTML tag that indicates a title on a website. Your tag should contain the central keyword of your content.
Let’s see together what this means:
HTML : This acronym stands for HyperText Markup Language. Most websites use this language to create web pages.
Tag : An HTML tag is a snippet of code that tells the browser how to display content.
Heading : HTML has six different heading tags (h1, h2, h3, etc.). The h1 tag is considered the most important tag, and the h6 tag is the least important. Tags are often formatted according to their importance. Therefore, an H2 subheading will have more influence than an H3, and so on.
Description of the different tags, from 1 to 6
Here is an example of a title or h1 tag :
Hi, I'm a title!
Your move : Open any webpage—preferably a good-quality blog—and follow these instructions. First, make sure you're on a webpage.
Next, view the source code . To do this, you can right-click and click "view page source" or simply press CTRL + U.
To search for the h1 tag , press CTRL + F to open the search function in your browser. Again, I'm using Chrome, but most browsers use this keyboard shortcut. When I press CTRL + F, I see a small search bar appear in the upper-right corner of the browser window. Type "h1" there.
Then press the Enter key. Chrome highlights the h1 tag on this page. The text between the opening and closing tags is the title.
example to search for H1 tags in the source code of a page
And there you have it! It sounds simple enough, but the h1 tag has a big impact , as you'll discover in the next section.
So why are h1 tags so important?H1 tags have always been a major ranking factor . The h1 tag has never lost its importance; it is an important SEO topic. In Moz's latest SEO ranking factor survey, tags are the third most influential group of SEO ranking factors.
H1 headings are typically the most visually striking content on a web page. This is probably the most important feature of H1 tags. At first glance, this benefit may not seem to be related to SEO.
Why? Because it's more about optimizing the user experience than it is about technically optimizing the web page. It is! But that's the direction SEO has been taking in recent years. SEO is actually more focused on user experience than search engine optimization. So don't forget to optimize the user experience. It's very important!
H1 tags are one of the most important SEO and UX elements.
Now, let's see how to use h1 tags properly .
How to write effective h1 tags?Writing quality h1 tags isn't complicated . The fact is, just about anyone with basic SEO or HTML knowledge uses these types of tags. 80% of search results appearing on the first page of Google use an h1 tag.
So why bother writing an article on the subject? Because most people use them incorrectly !
Here benin phone number data are the rules for writing h1 tags . Follow these guidelines and you'll get great h1 tags every time.
1. Use only one h1 heading.
Each page only needs one h1 tag. Why? If they're so effective, why not add more?
Each web page only needs one h1 tag and one main heading. There's no reason to use more than one h1 tag . A search engine may index multiple h1 tags on a single web page, but it's better to focus on one phrase or keyword. Having more than one h1 heading won't necessarily confuse the search engine, but it could weaken your SEO efforts.
Some SEO specialists choose to use multiple h1 tags, but in my experience keeping only one main heading gives better SEO results .
2. Your h1 tag should describe the topic of your web page
The h1 tag should describe the content. Often, the h1 tag will be similar to your main heading and will match the title of your post. It should give the reader a clear idea of what they are going to read .
The h1 tag should be between 20 and 70 characters long . But don't focus too much on the length of the h1 tag. It's not as important as it used to be. The only reason I mention it is because h1 tags that are too short are a waste of space and SEO opportunities. But be careful, a tag that is too long may produce less SEO effect. A medium length (20 to 70 characters) is perfectly appropriate. A normal-sized sentence will work just fine.