An empty <h1> tag is not recommended. This would be a missed opportunity to give both users and search engines more context as to what your page is about.
If your <h1> tag exists but is empty, you can update it to include text. Here’s how.
A <h1> tag is highly recommended by most SEOs as a way of further reinforcing the primary focus of the page in addition to the title of the page.
This benefits both users and search engines. When a user lands on a page, the <h1> tag is there to show them that the page matches their intent. For search engine bots, the <h1> provides further context about the contents of the page.
The solution to this specific issue involves checking that an H1 has a text value. When you inspect a page’s HTML, an H1 tag with no text will look like this:
<h1></h1>
This shows that the tag exists, but is empty. Instead, there should be text between <h1> and </h1>. For example:
<h1>Example H1 Tag That Was Added</h1>
These updates can be made directly in your site’s code by finding and optimizing all instances of <h1></h1>.
If you don’t have access to your site’s code, the dev team should be able to assist you.
The above optimization can be scaled by leveraging SEO execution platform ClarityAutomate. This way, a few minutes is all it takes to update <h1> tags across your site.
Select “Content” in ClarityAutomate, since this optimization deals with an <h1> tag.
As opposed to having the tag added or deleted, it needs to be updated.
This step locates the tag that will be updated.
The H1 tag will be placed before existing content.
Lastly, drop in the text that will serve as the H1 tag.
A few clicks in ClarityAutomate is all it takes to give an empty H1 a proper text value. Here’s a before-and-after example of updating an <h1> tag: