Multiple H1 Headings: How to Handle Them for SEO & Accessibility? #AskGoogleWebmasters
[MUSIC PLAYING] JOHN MUELLER: Welcome
to another episode of Ask Google Webmasters. Today's question is
from Marcus Chaeppeli. Marcus is asking, can we have
a clear answer to the question how to handle headings
and accessibility? I see a lot of multiple h1's. All but one are usually
hidden out there on the web. Everybody treats it differently,
and stuff like the main tag. So this is a pretty
common question, and it's pretty straightforward. Our systems don't
have a problem when it comes to multiple
h1 headings on a page. That's a fairly common
pattern on the web. We use headings to better
understand the context of different parts of a page. Having clear, semantically
understandable headings is useful in understanding
any given page. However, we have to work
with the web as we find it. And a lot of it isn't
semantically structured at all. For users, the
difference is minimal.
Both kinds of pages
can be extremely relevant to a question
that they have. In turn, our systems
aren't too picky, and we'll try to work with
the HTML as we find it, be it one h1 heading,
multiple h1 headings, or just styled pieces of text
without semantic HTML at all. In short, when thinking
about this topic, SEOs shouldn't be your
primary objective. Instead, think about your users. If you have ways of making your
content accessible to them, be it by using multiple h1
headings or other standard HTML constructs, then
that's not going to get in the way
of your SEO efforts.
I hope you found
this answer useful. And if there's anything
else we can answer for you in short video
form, please send us your questions using
the #AskGoogleWebmasters on Twitter, so that
we can include them in one of the future videos. To stay in the loop, make sure
to subscribe to the channel and see you next time. [MUSIC PLAYING].
