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On my website, I utilize many h1, h2, and h3 tags. I am most worried over the fact that I utilize the h1 tag way too often (3-5 times per page).

I did so initially while designing the site because I didn't know any better, but now I am worried that this may have a negative impact on the SEO of my site.

Can too many of those tags have that sort of affect?

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  • Google doesn't care much about which tags you use these days. Google has never cared about correct semantic structure of website tags. Google used to give weight to text in heading tags because they would be show to users prominently. Now Google renders pages and gives correct weight based on prominence to any text as it is styled. There is no longer any reason to pay attention almost all markup from an SEO perspective.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Nov 16, 2017 at 22:14
  • See also How important are headings in SEO
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Nov 16, 2017 at 22:15

3 Answers 3

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On my perspective, I don't think Google imposes a strict rules on the number of heading tags to use in a page. There are also websites that use heading tags (h2/h3) for subheadings on longer content - it's good for both the user and search bots.

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I would not using multiple h1 tags. According to specification of W3 HTML Headings:

Search engines use the headings to index the structure and content of your web pages. Users skim your pages by its headings. It is important to use headings to show the document structure. H1 headings should be used for main headings, followed by headings, then the less important h3, and so on.

Each web page can be represented as a document. Each document has a name / subject - this name refers to the entire complete document. But the document can have both subsections / paragraphs - they are only one part of the complete document. Each of these parts can also have nested parts as subsections / paragraphs.

If we apply the elements h1-h2-h3... to this. The name of the entire document is the element h1. The name of this parts is an element h2. If any part is nested subsections, the name of this subsection is an element h3, and so on downward.

Example:

enter image description here

To verify the structure of your web pages, you can apply this validator Nu Html Checker with a filter choice as "outline" and HTML 5 Outliner.

Read more Do not recommend using nested sections with h1 ++ HTML/Usage/Headings/h1only ++ Creating an outline.

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    While this answer is a good answer from the perspective of semantics, it doesn't say anything about search engine optimization. Google just doesn't care if your code is semantically correct or not, nor if your HTML source validates. They never have, and they say they never will. They only care about how it looks to users.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 11:39
  • At one point, and it may still be somewhat true, Google only took the first h1 tag and ignored the rest. This is because of gaming search and the dependency of indexing one h1 tag. Today, header tags are handled differently, however, there is very likely no advantage in having more than one h1 tag. Use header tags for signaling hierarchy and signaling what the content block is about. Good answer! Cheers!!
    – closetnoc
    Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 16:17
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Yes. h1s are meant to be the main title of your page (article). Instead of using more than one h1, take advantage of the strong element. Search bots are like humans today, and using more than one h1, is like making each screaming for attention.

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