Can it be a harm to Google SEO if I will insert <br> inside <h1>?

Question

Can it be harm for my site in manner of SEO if I will insert BR tag inside H1 tag?

<h1> keyword1 <br/> 
     keyword2  <br/> 
     keyword2  <br/> 
</h1>

Solution

It can be appropriate to use br in heading elements. An example from the HTML5 spec:

<h1>Ramones <br>
<span>Hey! Ho! Let's Go</span> 
</h1>

If it’s appropriate in your case depends on your actual content (a heading listing three keywords is most likely not a good idea in the first place).

However, even for inappropriate uses of br, there is no reason to assume that it would affect your ranking in Google Search.

Comments

[albert]

if you're using that markup, ditch the br element and add display:block to the span

[unor]

@albert: This would only work for users with CSS support. For other users, it would not be clear where the musician name ends and where the title starts.

[albert]

who doesn't have css support? i'm aware of the no js user community, but no css? is that a thing?

[unor]

@albert: Probably depends on how many users are needed to become "a thing" ;) The popular browsers are not the only clients consuming HTML. There are text browsers, feed readers, search engines, users that use CSS user stylesheets (overwriting all of your CSS), screen readers (some might not make a reading pause in this example without br or a textual delimiter), etc. In this HTML5 example, the br was added exactly for this purpose: to convey the semantics (here is a break), not just the styling (show a new line).

[Quentin]

h1 has a content mode of phrasing content which includes br. So no, it isn't an error.