WordPress SEO checking tools can show 'Duplicate H1 tags'. Further investigation shows that the same H1 tag is used for page1/page2/page3 etc.
Duplicate H1
H1 is usually the site title and show the search engine what the most important part of the page is. This should be the top, the first paragraph of information should be the most relevant to the page title (H1) for maximum SEO effect.
Pagination
Pagination is the splitting up of many topics into manageable pages. WordPress can paginate the categories and tags. This pagination can make the page load more quickly because only a few previews of the tag or category are loaded for each page. But the problem is the same H1 tag is reused for every page.
Multiple H1
Having the same H1 on different pages gives the error of Duplicate H1 tags. The different pages are just the same category or tag list broken into pages, but it is still flagged as an SEO error. Thankfully its not a difficult fix if your theme supports it.
Fix for Duplicate H1
The fix for duplicate H1 on wordpress for category and tag pages can be achieved by adding a page number to the H1 description.
If you are using a TagDiv theme, like Newspaper you can find the setting in its template editor.
Three key settings will fix the duplicate H1 due to pagination in categories and they are:
- Show current page number
- Page number text
- Hide first page number
Show current page number (☑) will append the current page number to the H1 tag text. This makes each page to have a unique H1 text.
Page number text is for you to change if you don't want to add the word 'Page' to the H1. You may have already use the word 'page' and something different can fit better. You can just leave it as default.
Hide first page number is pretty neat. The fist page H1 won't be altered. Only page 2, 3 etc will show page number. This will leave your H1 exactly as you wanted it to be for the first page. Subsequent pages of the same category and tag will have page numbers appended.
You get unique H1 categories and tags in a few clicks. Job done.
Final
After saving the changes your category and tag titles will now look like:
- SEO Description H1
- SEO Description H1 - Page 1
- SEO Description H1 - Page 2
- SEO Description H1 - Page 3
- .....
You get a unique H1 tag for every category and tag page when they have been broken up into multiple pages for easier reading and quicker page loading.
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