From the SEO perspective, is it ok to change h1 content based on the sites query parameters?

Question

I have a page with many cards and with filtering. The filtering is added to the query and I want the h1 to reflect what is filtered.

While this is not problem to implement, should I, is this ok from the SEO perspective?

Answer 1

If you want SEO to index the page with the different filters applied then I would publish the filters in the params such as

example.com?filter=value

or

example.com/page/filter_value and use rewrite (in .htaccess or similar) to map to the url above.

Then you can refer to the filtered page (if required) from other pages and you can put them in sitemap.txt.

Answer 2

Dynamically changing the page, or headline tag, from a user interaction, is more or less a feature of the internet these days.

As @Rohit posted, you would need to expose these pages to Google for them to show.

Search engines are not going to put information into a query text field and click search. So the pages that come up would neither be seen nor cause a problem. Such content is referred to as invisible web, deep web, hidden web ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_web

The deep web,1 invisible web,[2] or hidden web[3] are parts of the World Wide Web whose contents are not indexed by standard web search-engine programs. This is in contrast to the "surface web", which is accessible to anyone using the Internet.[4] Computer-scientist Michael K. Bergman is credited with inventing the term in 2001 as a search-indexing term.[5]

To make these page appear in the search engine, (if there is a value to doing that in your use case?) one would need to create a www.example.com/?search=term or www.example.com/?filter=term and create links to those pages that the search engine can follow.

These linked pages can then become seen and appear in search engines. And the change to the h1 tag would not cause a problem. When using search engine console you can preview the image, which google captures / sees, to verify that the example.com/?filter=term page has been correctly updated with the desired h1 text for google to index these pages.

It sounds like you have a use case for "sitelinks search box" - https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/sitelinks-searchbox IE the search snipplet that pinterest.com has.

Add something like:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "WebSite",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/",
  "potentialAction": {
    "@type": "SearchAction",
    "target": {
      "@type": "EntryPoint",
      "urlTemplate": "https://query.example.com/search?q={search_term_string}"
    },
    "query-input": "required name=search_term_string"
  }
}
</script>

To allow people to search your site via the Google Search Results page.