Faizan_Zahid reported that Discourse forums generate multiple H1 tags on topic, category, and tag pages, which violates SEO best practices and potentially harms search rankings. They requested the removal of the duplicate H1 found in the site header, specifically the code wrapping the site name in an H1 tag on non-homepage pages. awesomerobot explained that while Google claims multiple H1s do not significantly impact rankings, the issue was addressed in pull request #18201 to improve semantic HTML structure. The fix was merged and released, removing the duplicate H1 from internal pages.
Faizan_Zahid confirmed the fix worked on their site but noted that the homepage no longer had an H1 tag, suggesting one should be added there. Jagster cautioned that the H1 issue was likely not the primary cause of traffic decline and pointed out other potential SEO issues, such as keyword stuffing. j127 clarified that bots view the markup differently than human users, particularly regarding JavaScript-rendered content.
orsoncrawford advised against treating multiple H1s as an automatic ranking penalty, emphasizing that clear heading structures and accurate content representation are more important. They recommended auditing the rendered HTML to ensure no plugins or themes reintroduced duplicate headings and suggested monitoring Search Console data to measure the actual impact of the template changes rather than attributing traffic fluctuations solely to H1 counts.
I am noticing this on my site and on all discourse forums.
You will there are 2 H1 tags coming on all topic pages, this has poorly affected our site’s SEO rankings as its against SEO best practices to have multiple H1s on 1 page. It confuses the Spiders/Google bots about what this page is about.
Can you guys please fix this in Core please, our traffic has declined a lot especially after Google helpful content core update which focuses on best Onpage SEO and User Experience.
We need to get rid of this below code on topic pages to have only 1 H1 on topic page. The same problem happens on all pages e.g category pages, tags pages etc. The H1 tag for header should only exist on the homepage and each other page should have only 1 unique H1 relevant to the exact page its on.
Below code needs to be removed from other pages, and leave it only on homepage.
For a while Google has claimed that this shouldn’t matter (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsgrSxCmMbM), but I suspect this question will come up occasionally until will try it.
Since the page title is already wrapped in a header tag, the H1 likely isn’t accomplishing much anyway.
This has been merged, so it will be available with Discourse updates later today. @Faizan_Zahid if you could report back in a few weeks that would be helpful, I’d like to see if this had any impact.
It is looking good now. I hope this will improve SEO rankings for my site.
If you think you have any more suggestions to boost SEO rankings for topics pages, please do share. As my site is loosing SEO traffic everyday after Google May and Aug 2022 core updates, i am not really sure what is the main culprit behind.
Hopefully it does, but no. <h1> question wasn’t important at all, but it is nicer now.
There is some other issues. Like too few is clicking your links from search results.
But if you look that Ryan Trahan story you’ll find there is a lot repeat after repeat. And such tricks shall be counted quite fast as keyword manipulating.
There won’t be <noscript> elements in the bot view. I think that noscript content will only show when using a text browser like lynx or disabling JS completely in a regular browser.
@awesomerobot While your new code has fixed H1s for all pages other than homepage, now on homepage, there is no H1.
From SEO standing each page of the site should have only 1 H1. The topic,tag,category pages all seems to be fine now after your recent commit.
If you think it’s easily possible to add only 1 H1 only on homepage, you can add that, but please make sure doing this should not again add another duplicate H1 on all other pages, All other pages seem to have correct H1 settings now, it’s just on homepage, there is no H1 and on homepage it will be good to have 1 unique H1 too.
If you think its not needed on homepage, you can ignore my suggestion.
The Discourse fix makes sense, but I’d be careful about treating multiple H1s as an automatic ranking penalty. The bigger concern is whether the page has a clear primary heading and whether the heading structure accurately reflects the content. Google also considers heading elements and the main visual title when understanding pages and generating search result titles.
For sites with lots of topic, category, and tag templates, I’d audit the rendered HTML after the update rather than assuming the template change solved everything. Checking the actual output is useful because theme components or plugins can sometimes introduce another heading unexpectedly.
I usually check heading structure alongside title tags, meta descriptions, canonicals, internal links, and other on-page elements.
The most useful test here would probably be to compare a sample of topic, category, and tag pages after the Discourse update, then watch Search Console over the following weeks. That would give a much clearer picture of whether the template change had a measurable effect rather than attributing a traffic change to H1 count alone.
