H1 heading over 70 characters
What it is
The page’s main H1 heading, the first one with text, is longer than 70 characters. The H1 heads the page for someone who has already arrived, so it works best as a short, plain statement of the topic. Long ones often carry a subtitle, a list of keywords or a whole sentence that would read better just below the heading.
Why it matters
Headings let readers and screen reader users find their way around a page , and a long main heading takes longer to take in. Google can use headings when it builds a title link , where a long heading would be cut to fit. Neither HTML nor Google sets a length limit, so a long H1 that reads naturally costs little.
How Asky checks it
Asky reads the first <h1> with text in the page’s raw HTML, skipping empty H1s before it (a heading added by JavaScript is not seen). It takes its text including nested elements such as <span>, but not an inline SVG’s <title> or <desc>, trims whitespace at both ends and counts the characters. More than 70 characters is reported. Seventy is a rule of thumb for a heading that scans at a glance, not a limit set by search engines or the HTML standard. Only that H1 is checked, so a long later H1 is not reported, and text hidden with CSS still counts.
Reported as an opportunity with low severity.
How to fix it
- Keep the core topic in the H1 and move the rest into a subtitle right below it, marked up as a
<p>, not as a second H1, which is reported as more than one H1. - Aim for 70 characters or fewer.
- If you shorten the H1 to the same words as the page title, it is reported as same as H1: keep the two worded differently.
- In a CMS where the post title feeds the H1, shorten the post title and give the SEO title its own text.
- To leave it as it is: if the long heading is the natural phrasing, such as a question the page answers, mark the issue resolved.
Example
On https://example.com/blog/pricing-guide, a 91-character H1 becomes a 27-character heading and a subtitle:
<!-- Before: 91 characters -->
<h1>The complete guide to pricing your SaaS product: models, examples and the mistakes to avoid</h1>
<!-- After: 27 characters, with the detail in a subtitle -->
<h1>How to price a SaaS product</h1>
<p class="subtitle">Models, examples and the mistakes to avoid</p>