h1

h1

The h1 tab shows data related to the <h1> heading of a page. The filters show common issues discovered for <h1>s.

The <h1> to <h6> tags are used to define HTML headings. The <h1> is considered as the most important first main heading of a page, and <h6> as the least important.

Headings should ordered by size and importance and they help users and search engines understand the content on the page and sections. The <h1> should describe the main title and purpose of the page and are widely considered to be one of the stronger on-page ranking signals.

The <h1> element should be placed in the body of the document and looks like this in HTML:

<h1>This Is An h1</h1>

By default, the SEO Spider will only extract and report on the first two <h1>’s discovered on a page. If you wish to extract all h1s, then we recommend using custom extraction.

Columns

This tab includes the following columns.

• Address – The URL crawled.
• Occurrences – The number of <h1>s found on the page. As outlined above, the maximum we find is 2.
• h1-1/2 – The content of the <h1>.
• h1-length-1/2 – The character length of the <h1>.
• Indexability – Whether the URL is indexable or Non-Indexable.
• Indexability Status – The reason why a URL is Non-Indexable. For example, if it’s canonicalised to another URL.

Filters

This tab includes the following filters.

• Missing – Any pages which have a missing <h1>, the content is empty or has a whitespace. <h1>’s are read and used by both users and the search engines to understand the purpose of a page. So it’s critical that pages have concise, descriptive and unique headings.
• Duplicate – Any pages which have duplicate <h1>s. It’s important to have distinct, unique and useful pages. If every page has the same <h1>, then it can make it more challenging for users and the search engines to understand one page from another.
• Over 70 characters – Any pages which have <h1> over 70 characters in length. This is not strictly an issue, as there isn’t a character limit for headings. However, they should be concise and descriptive for users and search engines.
• Multiple – Any pages which have multiple <h1>. While this is not strictly an issue because HTML5 standards allow multiple <h1>s on a page, there are some problems with this modern approach in terms of usability. It’s advised to use heading rank (h1–h6) to convey document structure. The classic HTML4 standard defines there should only be a single <h1> per page, and this is still generally recommended for users and SEO.
• Alt Text in h1 – Pages which have image alt text within an h1. This can be because text within the image is considered as the main heading on the page, or due to inappropriate mark-up. Some CMS templates will automatically include an h1 around a logo across a website. While there are strong arguments that text rather than alt text should be used for headings, search engines may understand alt text within an h1 as part of the h1 and score accordingly.
• Non-sequential – Pages with an h1 that is not the first heading on the page. Heading elements should be in a logical sequentially-descending order. The purpose of heading elements is to convey the structure of the page and they should be in logical order from h1 to h6, which helps navigating the page and users that rely on assistive technologies.

Please see our Learn SEO guide on Heading Tags.