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I've seen a lot of websites where posts have h1 headers that contain hyperlinks:

<h1 class="title">
   <a href="link">Title</a>
</h1>
enter code here

I don't know if this helps in SEO or not, should I do this in the header of my posts or is it unnecessary?

5
  • 1
    Do not think in terms of tricks please. There is no real value in this. For example, what would you be linking to? The h1 does not help the link and the link does not help the h1. Each have their own effect which would be exactly the same as if they were separate. Just focus on straight forward content and HTML. Leave the BS in the field where it belongs.
    – closetnoc
    Commented Oct 27, 2016 at 15:09
  • yeah but I see this habit in a lot of websites and I didn't see any relationship between them, that's why I asked. the h1 title in those posts are linked to the same post.. Commented Oct 27, 2016 at 15:49
  • You will find a lot of SEO advice out there that is based upon pure silliness or less. People and apps will follow this advice thinking along the lines of tricks. The h1 tag is an important one. It is generally accepted here that it should not be messed with. Inserting links, spans, and what not does not do anything at all. It is still 1+1=2 and not 1+1=5. Each has it's own effect, the h1 tag and the link. Combining the two does nothing additional. It certainly does not hurt. At the very least, it sends two sets of identical signals. Nesting them, however, is not required for that.
    – closetnoc
    Commented Oct 27, 2016 at 16:22
  • Like @Goyllo said, even stackexchange use h1 tags and hyperlink together, maybe it's just for sharing links easily and there is no any SEO benefits like he said,, Commented Oct 27, 2016 at 16:45
  • @Goyllo is referring to usability and also states what I have said; there is no specific SEO advantage. Google sees these as two elements; one, the h1 tag, and two a link tag. Each has it's value. Used together or separate has the same effect. The advantage is that the content portion of both tags are used only once. Not a big deal. Just convenient. I am not sure there is much of an advantage linking to the current page. Certainly, it does not hurt if you want to do it. Cheers!!
    – closetnoc
    Commented Oct 27, 2016 at 16:52

1 Answer 1

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It's used for sharing links easily. There are no SEO benefits.

Here in stackexchange, you can see h1 tags and hyperlink together, because it is easiest to copy paste when someone want to reference another question from SE. You can still copy paste from browser address bar, but this one, make copy paste faster.

Link with better anchor text is good practice for SEO.

Extra note: Most of the people don't do that, because Googlebot follow the link structure and crawl all the links. Suppose Google can crawl 500 URLs in one day, and you place header link, then your 1 crawl will be waste in header link, because Google already is crawling it. There are no official statements on how Google crawl links, so I can't add more value on this. Generally I don't do that, unless I have specific reason which does not related to SEO.

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  • So I guess it is a good practice to add the post-link to the post-title ,, Thanks :D Commented Oct 27, 2016 at 16:48
  • I have edit my answer, hope extra note will be add more value.
    – Goyllo
    Commented Oct 27, 2016 at 17:09
  • There should really be no effect to the number of pages Google is going to check on your site. It will read the front page, analyze it, get the new links and crawl those. Repeat for each page. It's not going to re-read the front page because the link appears there. For all the pages, the link does appear in your menus... Commented Jun 26, 2020 at 5:50

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