Noticecontent.title-h1

The title and the heading are about different things

Why it matters

The <title> is what a search engine shows in the results; the <h1> is what the visitor reads when they arrive. When the two share no significant word, one of them is usually wrong, and whichever it is the visitor clicked expecting one thing and was shown another — which is the moment they go back.

Google works out its title link from several places, "the main visual title shown on the page" among them, and a heading that disagrees with the title is one of the reasons it rewrites a title rather than using yours.

They don't need to match. A title carries the brand and often a place ("Wedding cakes in Leeds · Flour & Co") where the heading is shorter ("Wedding cakes"); that shares a word and is exactly right. This fires only when there is no overlap at all, common words and plurals discounted, which is nearly always a template that fills the title from one field and the heading from another.

Source: Influencing your title links in search results.

How to fix it

Decide what the page is about, and put that in both:

<title>Wedding cakes in Leeds · Flour &amp; Co</title>
<h1>Wedding cakes in Leeds</h1>

If the title comes from a CMS field and the heading from another, set the one that is wrong. It is usually the title: themes often build it from the category or the site name rather than the page.

Examples

These are the rule's own test pages, and what it says about each. They are run on every change to the rule book.

<h1>Newsletter sign-up</h1>
Asked for
https://www.example.com/cakes

NoticeThe title and the main heading share no significant word: "Wedding cakes in Leeds · Flour & Co" against "Newsletter sign-up". Someone clicking the first expects to arrive at the second.

fail-different
<h1>Wedding cakes</h1>
Asked for
https://www.example.com/cakes

PassedThe title and the main heading agree on what the page is about.

pass-shared