Is header tag content weighted differently when it comes to SEO?
For example if I were to replace my h1 elements with h2…
(assuming only a single h2 elements per page and no other header elements )
- Would this reduce optimization? Would the content be ranked lower?
It is logical to assume that
<h1>tags carry more weight then<h2>as typically the<h1>is the title of the page and conveys the general subject matter of the content below. So switching from and<h1>to an<h2>should reduce the value of your semantic markup and thus have a negative effect on your rankings. But since there are so many other factors involved in ranking pages, unless you’re after a really long tail keyword I wouldn’t expect it to make any noticeable difference.If you are doing this because you prefer the style of an
<h2>tag over an<h1>tag then you are definitely making a mistake. You should use CSS to alter the appearance of the<h1>tag to suit your needs. This is perfectly fine to do from an SEO perspective as long as you aren’t trying to make the<h1>tag look like normal text (which you aren’t).