[Resolved] h1 "entry title" Tag in page title – or double h1

[Enrico]

Good morning Tom,
My previous theme didn’t set the h1 “entry title” in the page title, so I added the h1 titles where was needed.

Now I discovered that I had double h1 “entry title” tag in all pages and posts in my site.

Your theme add by default this tag h1 “entry title” to the page titles of the site. So I demoted the h1 “entry title” in pages and posts to h2.

I am not sure if your choices, of adding the tag h1 “entry title” in the page title, it is good for SEO.

I see this problems in your decision to add this tag, h1 “entry title”, to the page titles:

1 – you limit the h1 tag “entry title” to the length of the page title, that must be short.
2 – normally page titles are different form “entry title”

Am I wrong? What is the best solution for SEO?

Regads
Enrico

[Tom]

Hi Enrico,

It’s important for SEO to have one (and only one) H1 tag on your page. This tag should be the entry title (the content title). There’s no limit to the entry title, it doesn’t have to be short, but it shouldn’t be too long.

On your blog, all of the entry titles are H2 tags, as you’re not supposed to have more than one H1 on each page.

The way it’s currently set up is perfect for SEO in my opinion.

What do you mean by “Page titles” exactly?

[Enrico]

Page title is the first title in the page, it can not be too long since it is the one google could use as title in search result.

If you add, for example, with Yaost SEO the name of the site to the page title, google should show page title + site name.

You have set there the entry title, so I have to limit it to show correctly in google search.

[Tom]

This is the common way to do it.

For example, here’s a Mashable post: http://mashable.com/2015/07/10/magnet-cosmic-explosion/

The title at the top (entry title) is an H1, as it’s the heading for that post.

The name of the site (site title) shouldn’t be an H1 in my opinion, as it’s the same on every single page. This is poor SEO, as it doesn’t tell search engines what the main focus of the page is, every page has the same focus in this case.

Of course, using GP Hooks you can wrap your site title in an H1 if you prefer 🙂

[Enrico]

My opinion is apparently supported by the tool Screaming Frog.

This tool show two different columns. One for page titles and one for h1. With GP Page title is the same of h1

[Tom]

Can you show me a screenshot of what they’re seeing possibly?

Just to clarify, when you say “page titles”, do you mean the title of your site at the top? The site title?

[Enrico]

The title of the site, is an other story 🙂 Anyway in my home page I use masonry and there is no H1 there.

I don’t know if is necessary in this case.

[Enrico]

You example of one Mashable page is correct, I think you are right. Screaming Frog created part of my doubts.

[Tom]

Just re-read your first post, I didn’t fully understand the first time.

So you had all of your H1 tags added to the content manually before, as your theme didn’t add the title to your content automatically.

When you switched to GP, you then had double H1 tags in your content, which is definitely no good.

I think it’s important for the theme to add these H1 tags automatically, as some people aren’t aware of the importance of having them.

There’s no way I can remove them, as it would affect thousands of people using the theme, and they would be very angry at me.

However, you can remove these titles from your pages with a function: https://gist.github.com/generatepress/261aa39f5e594c243c02

That way you can add your own H1 tags inside of your content.

The way GP is set up straight out of the box is ideal for SEO purposes – one H1 tag per page, and it’s the title of the page.

If you’re using masonry, your titles will be H2 tags, as it’s important to only have one H1 tag per page. Having more than one H1 tag on a single page isn’t W3C valid and will hurt your SEO rankings.

Hope this helps 🙂

[Enrico]

Thanks a lot for you clarification. Last question it is good to add one h1 in my home page with masonry? And what is the best way to do it?

Actually my home page has no h1

[Tom]

It’s always good to have at least one H1 on each page.

For your blog page, you can use the Page Header add-on under “Appearance > Blog Page Header” 🙂

[Enrico]

Wonderful! This is what I needed.
Thanks a lot Tom.

Have a nice day!
Enrico

[Tom]

You as well!

[Derek Binion]

This is confusing. Tom,when I make a new post and type “top 5 Chicken nugget makers” as my title does GP automatically make that the <H1> tag? I thought it did but this post confuses me because i’m a dunderhead.

[Tom]

GP will automatically make your main title/headline an H1 tag on the single post page 🙂

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