What are Duplicate H1 and Title Tags? Does It Affect SEO?

One of the primary strategies for implementing SEO on your website is to create content. To get good results, you need to provide users with unique and quality content. Not only about the content, you also need to modify the title section, or H1, and Title Tags so that they can be recognized by users and search engines.

However, what if you have experienced cases of duplicate H1 and Title Tags? Let's understand how to optimize it in the following explanation.

What are Duplicate H1 and Title Tags?

H1 is one of the six HTML header tags that function to structure the contents of a website. H1 can provide information to users so they can find out what chapters and subchapters are contained in your content. Having a good heading structure can maximize the SEO strategy for your website.

Meanwhile, Title Tags are part of the content title that will be displayed on search engines. Title Tags will give search engines a clue about the content on a website. The existence of H1 and Title Tags is very important for your SEO strategy because these two elements will help search engines crawl websites.

Broadly speaking, duplicate H1 and Title Tags are conditions where H1 is duplicated as Title Tags, or Title Tags are duplicated as H1. This can also be defined as a situation in which you use the same sentence to create H1 and Title Tags in a website's content. 

Are Duplicate H1 and Title Tags Bad for SEO?

So far, no one has really proven that there will be a negative impact if you duplicate H1 and Title Tags. Functionally, these two elements have differences. H1, or <h1> is the title that users will see when they enter a particular website. While Title Tags, or <title> titles will appear on the SERP.

Actually, it doesn't matter if you want to equate H1 with Title Tags, or vice versa. Because, in fact, Google doesn't always use the title that we have specified. This is because Google has the ability to replace the page title of a website with an editorial that it thinks is more relevant.

There is no data that says that duplicating H1 and Title Tags for one page will result in an error. However, some SEO experts recommend using H1 and Title Tags which should not be duplicated, to optimize optimization strategies. See the examples below:

• Title Tags: BuketBungaCantik.com - Selling Beautiful & Cheap Flower Bouquets
• H1: Selling Beautiful & Cheap Flower Bouquets

Furthermore, you should avoid duplicating Title Tags and H1 on multiple pages, as this can lead to cannibalism on those pages. Users will also assume that several pages with the same title have the same content.

How to Optimize H1 and Title Tags

After knowing what duplicate H1 and Title Tags are and what impact they have on SEO, now is the time to find out how to optimize H1 and Title Tags in order to maximize your website optimization strategy. Check out the explanation below.

1. Make Unique and Interesting H1 and Title Tags

Since H1 serves to inform both users and search engines what your content is about, every page on your website should have a unique and interesting H1. Duplicating H1 and Title Tags across multiple pages can create the impression that the pages have the same content.

Duplicate H1 and Title Tags on one page do not directly cause your website to be penalized, but several pages that look similar can affect search traffic. When the same H1 and Title Tags appear on more than one page, Googlebot cannot tell which page is more relevant to a particular search query.

In the end, Google will choose to favor competitor pages that look clearer and more relevant than your website.

2. Use Main Keyword on H1 and Title Tags

One of the most commonly used SEO strategies is H1 and Title Tags containing the main keywords, which are expected to be able to determine the ranking of content. You can use H1 and Title Tags to draw straight lines from your content to queries that generate organic traffic for your website.

The best way to do this is to include the main keyword in the H1 and Title Tags, in the hope that it will be easier for users to find your content as an answer to the query they are looking for.

3. Use Different H1 and Title Tags on Each Page

While H1 and Title Tags are allowed to have the exact same editor, you should only implement them on one page. For other pages, make different H1 and Title Tags.

This serves to show that your website has many different pages, so Google will not consider it a duplicate page. In addition, using different H1 and Title Tags on each page can help you identify each page on your website more easily.

Using the same H1 and Title Tags on each page will prevent search engines from recognizing the page, which will make it less likely for your website to appear at the top of the SERP.

4. Use 60 Characters at the Most

Although search engines do not set technical limits on the length of H1s or Title Tags, a minimum of 20 characters and a maximum of 60 characters are recommended. Why?

This is because H1 and Title Tags that are too short (under 20 characters) will be less informative for users. This will make users less likely to get an idea of your content. Additionally, H1s and Title Tags longer than 60 characters will be truncated on the SERP. This results in less than optimal delivery of content titles to users.

5. H1 and Title Tags Should Be Highlighted

The next way to optimize duplicate H1 and Title Tags is from a website display perspective. Create a web display design that is able to highlight H1 and Title Tags as the most important typographic elements on the website page.

At a minimum, you need to design H1 and Title Tags in large, bold letters that are impossible for readers to miss.

Why is this important to do? Because H1 and Title Tags are basically useful for signaling to users that they are reading the right content that gives answers to what they are looking for.

6. Make sure H1 and Title Tags are Relevant to Search Intent

Search intent is about why the user uses a query to find a particular answer.

Matching search intent is just as important as matching keywords to find content that users want. One reliable way to match user intent is to use long-tail keywords for H1s or Title Tags that align with the purpose of your content.

7. Use Supporting HTML Header Tags

HTML header tags are capable of creating information hierarchies for the content on your page. For example, if you think of H1 or Title Tags as the title of a book, then the next header, which is H2, should act like a chapter title and describe the main topic that will be covered.

While the next header, namely H3-H6, functions as a subtitle in each section, just like a chapter in a book that is divided into several subtopics.

The use of supporting HTML header tags is intended to make it easier for visitors to read the contents of website pages at a glance while at the same time making Googlebot understand how the text is structured and how comprehensively the topic is discussed in your content.

Thus, the discussion on how to optimize duplicate H1 and Title Tags. You can use SEO services to help you optimize every element on the website, including H1 and Title Tags. SEO services make it easier for you to maximize every marketing strategy that you want to implement on your website.