One H1 heading per page: Crawl Audit check 57

Short answer: the H1 is the page's main heading. Google says more than one H1 is no problem for its systems. Accessibility guidance recommends a single H1, so people using screen readers can find the page's main topic straight away. Check 57 passes exactly one H1, warns for more than one, and fails if there are none.

What Crawl Audit checks

• Pass: exactly one <h1> on the page.
• Warning: two or more, with the count.
• Fail: none. Check 58 tests for a missing H1 too.

What Google says

• John Mueller of Google, in a 2019 Search Central video: "Our systems don't have a problem when it comes to multiple h1 headings on a page."
• Google's SEO starter guide: "There's also no magical, ideal amount of headings a given page should have."
• The H1 can still help: Google's title link guide suggests "putting the title text in the first visible <h1> element on the page".

What accessibility guidance says

MDN's reference for heading elements has a section headed "Avoid using multiple <h1> elements on one page". It says "A page should generally have a single <h1> element that describes the content of the page", and that while more than one is "allowed by the HTML standard (as long as they are not nested), this is not considered a best practice."

That's why Crawl Audit warns rather than fails. It won't hurt your search ranking, and it's still worth fixing.

Where extra H1s come from

• A logo or site name wrapped in an H1 in the header, on every page.
• Page builders where every section's big heading is an H1.
• A theme that makes the post title an H1, plus an H1 typed into the content.

On your platform

• WordPress: the Title block's heading level is set by the theme's template. For example, Twenty Twenty-Five makes the post title an H1 on single posts. If your theme does that, start the content's own headings at H2.
• Shopify, Wix and Squarespace: check the header for a logo in an H1, and check page builder sections for more than one H1.
• Next.js: keep a single <h1> in each page component, and use <h2> and below in shared layouts.

Sources

• Google Search Central, Multiple H1 Headings: How to Handle Them for SEO & Accessibility? (video, 3 October 2019).
• Google Search Central, SEO starter guide and Influencing your title links, checked 3 October 2026.
• MDN, <h1> to <h6>: The HTML section heading elements, checked 3 October 2026.
• WordPress, Title block.