Too many h1 tags on published spaces

Question

Hello, We start publishing our documents in confluence. When looking at the code, I've seen that confluence uses

for the title, but also for all heading 1s. I think it's still valid that a website should only use one or a few h1 tags for search optimisation. It's not much a problem on large sites, but a small site with 4 headers has five

tags on one single page with no subheaders. Is there a way to fix that and map "Heading 1" on the

tag? Thank you for your thoughts!

Bill Bailey · Answer

The funny thing about the article is it gives lots of evidence that it doesn't matter how many you have, just that the first one should be relevant to the content. But later, she reverts to a long-held belief that you should only have one. ;-)

This "rule" came from a time before search (and pages) were far less sophisticated. But because Google doesn't disclose their algorithms, people have adhered to old rules of thumb without really knowing it is works. Sort of like throwing salt over your shoulder for good luck: won't hurt, but probably won't help either - just makes you feel like you are doing something.

Manuel Merki · Answer

Hello Bill,

The page you quote says:

wrapping them in H1 has some effect

and

Also be careful to ensure that the H1 reinforces the point of the page, and that there is only one H1.

So why waste the potential of hundreds of sites with valuable content.

Bill Bailey · Answer

I think that the "only one h1 heading on page" for SEO is bogus, or rather leftover from earlier search algorithms -- a holdover from years ago. Google can find content wherever it is. Headings help, but more to the readers to understand the flow of content.

Take a look at this article for some background how-important-is-h1-tag-for-seo:

If you already have good headings, wrapping them in H1 has some effect, but it’s small enough that “if it takes longer than an hour to implement H1 Tags on all pages and they already have some large descriptive text on the page then it is probably not worth the time required.”

What I think is often missed in SEO is that it is the value of the content that matters, and the number of other sites linking to your content to raise its value., not "did I have x number of keywords in my H1".