Title and H1: who does what on a page

The title is the text Google may show as the link to a result; the H1 is the heading visible at the top of the page. Google rewrites the title when the query demands it and leaves the H1 alone, so the two texts should not match word for word.

What the title does

The title link is not a field you fill in and see in the SERP: Google builds it from several sources, and the <title> is only the main one. The documentation on title links, read on 1 November 2026, says there is no length limit on the element, but the title link is truncated to fit the device width. It also asks you to avoid keyword stuffing and boilerplate titles repeated on every page.

What the H1 does

The H1 is document structure, not metadata. It describes the content in front of the reader and can be longer than the title, because it competes with nothing in the same list. There is one per page: two H1s do not confuse Google, but they remove the entry point for a reader and for a screen reader.

Measuring both fields on a site

cat > check-title-h1.mjs  line.trim())
  .filter(Boolean);
for (const url of urls) {
  const html = await (await fetch(url)).text();
  const title = (html.match(/]*>([\s\S]*?)/i) || [])[1] || "";
  const h1 = [...html.matchAll(/]*>([\s\S]*?)/gi)];
  const text = h1.map((m) => m[1].replace(/]+>/g, "").trim());
  console.log(`${String(title.length).padStart(3)} title  ${String(text.length).padStart(2)} h1  ${url}`);
  if (text.length === 0) console.log("    no h1 in the served HTML");
}
EOF
printf '%s\n' https://ui.eneawork.it/ https://ui.eneawork.it/blog https://ui.eneawork.it/blog/come-aggiungere-schema-markup > urls.txt
node check-title-h1.mjs urls.txt

The script reads the served HTML, not the hydrated DOM, and prints the title length, the H1 count and the URL. The distinction matters: the home page of this site declares a title and zero H1s in the initial HTML, while the article declares one. Only someone reading the source sees the difference.

The practical rule

• Title: one verifiable promise that stands alone, without the site name in front.
• H1: the sentence that opens the content, and it repeats the title only when the title is already short.
• Google publishes no character limit: truncation depends on the device, so the decisive words go first.
• One H1 per page, and the same text in the in-page table of contents.

The live record

The catalogue ships headers with the hierarchy already set: hero, header and the full list of 1,556 blocks. In a hero block the H1 is the element the block must render once: paste two heroes into one page and you get two H1s. Checked on 1 November 2026.

The limitation

The H1 count depends on how the site is served. A page built in JavaScript can show an H1 in the browser and none in the initial HTML: Google does render, but every extra pass costs time and risk. The measurement above describes the served HTML, not the final DOM.

Where to continue

Writing the field itself is in how to write a title tag; the field below, the one that decides the click, is in meta descriptions that work. The sequence for getting into the index is in getting a site indexed by Google, and what you can edit on WordPress, Wix or React components is in WordPress, Wix or React components.