Are Header Tags Really Necessary?

Some recent information was distributed from John Mueller at Google. In a video response to webmaster questions, John mentioned that header tags are not absolutely necessary to ranking a web page in the search engine. This comment had a few search engine optimization experts up in arms as this directly contradicts one of Google's earliest recommendations.

Let's get into why H1 tags are important.

Why Use An H1 Tag?

The H1 tag was first created by web developers to showcase the name of a page to users. Since the dawn of web design, H1 tags have been used to inform users the name of a page and where they are within a site. If you think it about it, it's really just a usability thing. If you were walking down the aisles of a grocery store, you would want to see the name of the products on each aisle - that's all an H1 tag attempts to do.

SEOs started using the H1 tag when they realized it can influence search results in Google. Specifically, when correlated to the title of the page and content throughout the body of the page, it seems to drive a better ranking. For instance, using the text "Sacramento SEO" in your H1 tag and title tag, as well as in the body content of the page, has a very strong chance of ranking higher in Google. Like anything else in search engine optimization however, people have figured out how to spam the header tag by stuffing it with keywords, promotional text and similar tricks.

This could be why John Mueller commented that Google doesn't really use the tag for ranking purposes any more. This could be following suit with the meta keywords tag that was deprecated in 2011. It seems as soon as marketers find a way to spam a tag or type of content, Google then de-prioritizes it in their algorithm.

What It Means For Content Creators

The most important thing to remember is that heading tags, including h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 and h6 should be used to display the hierarchy of content on page. Rather than focusing solely on SEO, use heading tags to best inform users of what your content is about and how to structure it.

Final Thoughts

While Google has not formally announced the H1 tag is deprecated, any information from John Mueller in a Google Hangout is a good indication that it's not an important factor anymore. Again, design your landing pages with your users in mind first, then follow through with any SEO considerations. Like any of Google's updates, Bing will likely follow suit in a few months announcing they too have deprecated the tag.