H1 heading tags
Headings provide an outline for pages, making it easier to understand what they’re about. All site pages use heading tags to structure its content into multiple levels, from H1 to H6.
H1 headings classify the overall page content, and H2 to H6 headings let you organize content into topics and subtopics.
It’s often unclear how heading tags relate to your site’s appearance and SEO, so we have some answers to common questions below.
How are H1 headings generated?
Our themes follow Shopify’s recommended structure for generating headings.
Product pages, collection pages, webpages, and blog posts use the title that you enter as the H1 heading.
The home page uses your store name as the H1 heading.
Why is there more than one H1 tag?
An automated SEO test may have warned you about ‘multiple’ or ‘duplicate’ H1s.
The reason for this is that there’s one H1 tag used for desktop and one for mobile. Only one of these tags is actually rendered by the browser at any given time, depending on the device used by your visitor.
Google's own crawlers will not flag this as an issue or duplicate content though, so you can safely ignore these warnings in any automated testing. It's just a false positive on the test and shouldn't negatively affect your SEO performance.
Is my page missing an H1 tag?
An SEO test may warn that you’re site is missing an H1 tag. Even when inspecting the code, it can look like there’s no content to the H1 tag.
However, this warning can be ignored. The theme automatically fills the heading content with your store name using an aria-label. SEO tools may mistakenly look for ‘hard coded’ text and not recognize the auto-generated label, which will cause a false warning.
Why is the home page H1 attached to the logo?
Attaching the H1 tag to the logo and store name is Shopify’s recommended SEO structure that’s used by any premium theme.
It may appear that the H1 applies to the logo image, but in fact this piece of code contains the store name. The theme automatically fills the heading content with your store name using an aria-label.
How do I edit H1 headings?
Except for the home page, all pages use the title that you enter for the H1 heading.
You can edit the page, product, or collection title to change the heading that appears on your store.
If you are looking to change the page title that is used in search listings, learn more below.
Aren't keywords in the H1 vital for SEO?
Up until the early 2000s, heading tags were important ranking factors. This meant that keywords needed to be in headings to rank — but that’s no longer the case.
Today, site headings provide the context for understanding the content of your site. On their own, headings are not ranking factors for SEO.
Headings tell you what you can expect a page to be about. To improve your site’s ranking, it’s meeting those expectations that really matters. To learn more, check out our guide for SEO for Shopify themes
Edit page title for SEO
H1 headings and page titles are not identical and can be edited separately, even though they often have the same content. While H1 headings appear on pages, the page title appears in search result listings, along with the meta description below.
You can edit the page title and meta description for each page, including the home page, in your Shopify admin. Go to your pages or posts, and click Edit website SEO. You can modify the the title, 'meta' description, and URL handle.
For the homepage, go to Online Store > Preferences > Title and meta description.
Can I change the heading tags?
There are no theme settings to H1 heading tags. The structure of heading tags in our themes are intended keep your site accessible to everyone and properly indexed for search engines.
The order and placement of heading tags is important for people who use screen readers to tell them what page they have landed on and to navigate through the page.
In Stiletto, you can change the heading tag of section titles between H2 and H6 in the theme editor. While this option doesn't change the appearance of the heading, you can control how your pages are structured by changing the heading tag.
How to find H1 tags in your theme
We cannot support customizations to the theme code. Editing how heading tags are used in the code is not recommended and can lead to unintended consequences, even impacting your search ranking.
If you are working with a developer, you can find the H1 tag for the home page in the header.liquid file of the theme code.
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