opinion needed on the importance of <h1>

Dear webmasters, SEOs and coders,

In most forums and SEO tips I hear the use and importance of h1 tag for onpage optimization. I know some extremely valuable and optimized sites and I have one of mine that's doing pretty well (without them / me having used that tag)...does the h1 tag really hold significance anymore when it comes to SEO!?

Share your views please.

Cheers!

 

A properly optimized site should have h1 tags, but at the same time you might still rank highly without them.

 

You should have some, but not too many, the best combination is h1, h2, h3 and h4.

 

h1 tag used to be very important now it has importance but not too much ... you may get rank with out using it in website

 

I also heard that h1 is becoming ineffective nowadays, can anyone here clarify it?

 

<h1> is necessary...Google spider crawls these elements within your website, and puts the them in "buckets" based on this importance:

1. url
2. title
3. h1
4. bloded text
5. key words within paragraph tag
6. alt tags

 

<h1> is important, so are <h2> and <h3>, and so on.
These header tags are friendly to search engines when they are crawling the page.
advice: Between the <h1> and </h1>, the keyword you are optimalizing on this page should be contained.

 

The H1 tag is an important element on the list of things to help you to rank.

Whilst not the most important tag it is still a useful way to emphasize the meaning of your content. Both to search engines and human readers.

Google has actually acknowledged that it gives some credit for use of Hx elements and/or font-size variations. So, yes, you can boost your on-page relevance by properly using a set of Hx elements.

 

H1 tags are specifically used for site structuring purposes. It's a way to communicate to the search engines and readers what a page is about.

 

Be careful not to put too much text in the H1 though, since that might render it useless or, in the worst case, make it look spammy.

 

If not include h1 tag alos not much problem.. But if the site is optmized well means should include not only h1 tag alos h2,h3 etc... This give some weight in Google raking

 

your main keyword in h1 tag will reflect the whole page, how its all about

 

A follow up question. If I have a site about keyword "fast cars", with a subpage "red cars" should the H1 stay "fast cars" for the whole site or should i put "red cars" in h1 on the subpage?

 

Yeah the H1 tags are important one, yet not that much important but you should not skip anything to optimize your site.

 

It appears they're not as powerful as they used to.

If you can mention the "red cars" without it looking spammy and within context then it should be okay. For instance, a latest feature: "Our latest fast cars check out these red ones" with some relevant description text underneath and a link.

But really it should be "fast cars" on the Home page and "red cars" on the sub page.

One H1 per page seems to be most effective (with the following H2, H3, structure). Perhaps every page could be thought of as a small novel with H1s being the main title and H2s, H3s being the subtitles.

 

I think on page usage of H tags are overrated. And why is that? If you look at the articles that are postedon yahoo news, CNN, BBC, they do not use on page formatting, and those articles rank at the top of the search engine results pages.

I personally use very little on page formatting, and my pages rank very well for their targeted keywords.

 

Um, most news articles employ the H1 tag. BBC, Yahoo, MSN and CNN - all use the H1 tag.

But I agree the tag is a little overrated; they're most likely top for news as blogs and other resources link to them articles naturally.

 

h1 tag is useful for search engine...but not to many..
thanks

 

Every page should be optimized for a different keyword, that keyword should be in the H1.

 

Its part of content architecture which google adds to their results ranking algorithm. Properly placed h1, h2, h3 and h4 tag on your website will help your website rank higher on search results.

Google still includes h1 tag into their ranking system. So better use it still.