SEO MYTH #09: “The H1 is the most important on-page element.”
Your H1 is still important, but it’s not the most important element on your pages. Think of the content structure on your webpage as an outline. It’s a tiered approach to presenting information to users and search engines. Which headertag your headline is wrapped in has little to no influence on your overall SEO. That header tag (whether it ís an H1, H2, H3, and so on) is only used for styling purposes.
The H1 is part of your CSS (Custom Style Sheet) that a designer puts together to reference what font styling and size will be applied to a particular piece of content. This used to be more important, but search engines are smarter these days and realized that web designers are more likely to use header tags to define style. (And, unfortunately, people also spammed this to death.)
So it really doesn’t matter what header tag you use, so long as you present your most important concepts upfront and closer to the top of the page. Remember: You’re optimizing your page for users first and foremost, which means that you want to tell them ASAP what your page is about through a clear headline. From a purely SEO perspective, though, it now matters much less to have your target keyword as the first word in an H1 tag.
