Rankelle

Main heading is very long

The H1 is over 70 characters. A main heading is meant to be read at a glance; one this long is usually a sentence or a paragraph that has been marked up as a heading.

How to fix it

Shorten the H1 to the subject of the page and move the rest into the opening paragraph.

When it is not a problem

A long heading is not penalised. The cost is legibility and a diluted signal about what the page is for, so this is a writing note rather than a technical one.

How Rankelle handles it

  • SeverityInformational. Often correct as it stands, and reported so you can see the pattern rather than so you can clear it.
  • DetectionDetected on a single page while crawling it, then grouped with the other pages under the same URL pattern.
  • GroupingEvery page with this finding under the same URL pattern becomes one cause, with a confidence taken from how much of the pattern is affected. 400 of 400 is a template; 6 of 14 is phrased as a question. Causes are ranked by the impressions behind their pages.
  • LandingThe affected URLs stay under cheap watch. When this finding is gone from all of them, the fix is marked landed without anyone reporting the deploy.
  • VerdictAt landing, comparable untouched URLs are frozen as a control set. Twenty-eight days later the two are compared, and the fix can come back as having done nothing — all four verdicts reach the report.

Try it on your own site, free

The whole audit of every website you add, no card and no expiry. Pay only when you want the proof.