Will it hurt SEO if I hide the <h1> tag?

Question

My pages look better without a heading title. So I don't really want to use a heading, but I don't want to leave <h1> out.

Is hiding the element an option? Will it hurt SEO?

Solution 1

Hiding <h1> tag can hurt SEO because <h1> tag is a very good spot to optimize a webpage for a keyword.

If I were you, I will try to reduce the size of the text in the <h1> tag or something similar but I won't hide this tag from search engines.

Solution 2

Hiding it specifically for the purposes of delivering different content to the search engines is called cloaking and is black hat SEO. This is a great way to hurt your rankings up to and including being removed from Google's search results.

So, yeah, bad idea.

Solution 3

<h1> is what defines the most important title on your page, and that makes a huge difference for SEO purposes. If you don't like your <h1> size or look you can always change it with CSS.

Here is video where Matt Cutts talks about overdoing <h1>, from there you can see the value.

Solution 4

While hiding <h1> can cause you problems, it depends on how you use it. However, we have no way of knowing what specifically Google looks for. In our case, we hide <h1> on our index page because it would be redundant and in the way but necessary for the outline and text only readers. This has not hurt our rankings at all.

Solution 5

If it makes your site better, hide it. If you site is better people will visit it more. If people visit it more people will link to it more. If people link to it more your rankings will be amazing.

Just make your site good. Most of this other stuff is turd polishing.

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Comments

[Admin]

How would your visitors know what page they're on if it doesn't have a heading?

[Admin]

It is shown in the menu. This website is really simple, it will be 3-4 pages.

[Admin]

If the heading in the menu is clear enough, you could just wrap that in a h1 tag.

[Admin]

Interesting question. I've also wondered about this because of wanting breadcrumbs to double as headings. I think the solution in part is embracing some redundancy.

[ayeo]

Yes, I've read about cloaking a while ago. So it checks if the element is hidden regardless on the content relevance? I guess I will try to fit it in a breadcrumb or something small as the others have mentioned.

[Alexis Wilke]

Are you sure that it would be negative if the content is related? I hide many H2 tags to avoid titles in different locations in my pages...

[John Conde]

Why are you hiding them rather then removing them? If it's for the search engines' benefit than that's a bad thing to do.

[ayeo]

Is there some restriction in the size that it can be? I've styled it as a breadcrumb, font-size: 11px and it looks sweet...

[riseagainst]

@BrunoLM H1 is also displayed by google as sitelinks' titles.

[NeedAnswers]

Now on my site I'm setting the h1's font-size = 0, will it hurt SEO ?

[NeedAnswers]

indeed, can't argue !

[divy3993]

@JohnConde, too late to ask, but still if I use font-size:0; and height:0;. Will that be an issue from SEO point of view. If yes, then what would be the consequence. Pl. help me.