One pretty controversial question that SEO’s are asking is whether or not it’s a good idea to have your H1 tags and page titles be the exact same. The short of it is; no it won’t damage your rankings to have your H1 tags and page titles the exact same, but there are ways you can better utilize the H1 tags and page titles to get the most out of your SEO. Essentially you are not using the H1 and page title for what they are supposed to be if they match exactly.
First lets take a look at the definitions of H1 tags and the page title respectively:
- H1 Tags: Also know as the <h1> tag in HTML this is usually the title of the post, or can be other accentuated text on a page. The H1 tag basically is the most important heading on your page, it is important to have a few keywords describing what your page is about in here. These tags add structure to the content on your site.
- Page Title: Every page on your website will have a title, this is what google uses to determine what’s on your page. This is what shows up on your SERP when you show up from an organic search. Google uses this to determine whats on your webpage so it’s important to sum up whats on the specific page it’s referencing using key words.
While they both may sound like they do the same thing, they are a little different in reality. The key to remember here is the page title is what visitors will see before they get to your site and the H1 tag is what they are seeing when they actually get to the site, so yes, they do serve different functions and that’s why it’s a good idea to utilize them differently.
While it’s not going to make or break your SEO rankings, it could give you that extra boost to jump a competitor that would have the same exact page titles and h1 tags for their web pages. So when optimizing or creating your next page, try to differentiate between the h1 tags and page titles. You want to make your page title a little more descriptive and keyword rich to drive visitors to your site, while the h1 tag can be a little more vague while still describing what the content is on the page.
Some of this can be confusing to the average website owner, that’s why it may be a good idea to contact a full service SEO agency to ensure you get the best SEO optimization possible for your site.