H1 Keyword Count

H1 Keyword Count reports how many times your keyword and its variations occur across the page’s combined H1 text — a raw occurrence count, not a target to hit. Read it as an observation about how closely your top heading aligns with the query, not a dial to maximize.

What it measures

This factor counts keyword-variation occurrences across the page’s H1 headings. Every H1 on the page is treated as part of one heading corpus, and the metric returns the total number of variation matches found within it.

How RankGear measures it

RankGear joins all parsed H1 texts together with spaces to form a single string, then performs case-insensitive whole-word matching against the keyword variation set. Longer terms are processed first, and each match consumes the text it covers so overlapping variations are not counted more than once.

How to optimize it

Write a clear primary heading that naturally uses the main keyword or a closely aligned variation where it genuinely fits. Treat the number as an observation about heading alignment rather than a target to raise: a descriptive, human-first H1 that happens to include the query does the work, and padding the heading with repeated variations to push the count up works against the reader.

Important considerations

• All H1 elements on the page contribute to one combined text corpus, so the count reflects every H1 together, not a single element.
• Overlapping variations are not double-counted — matched text is consumed as it is found.
• The metric does not enforce a single-H1 rule; it measures keyword presence, not heading structure.
• A descriptive H1 should serve users first; keyword alignment is secondary to clarity.
• This is a correlation-based prioritization signal that tracks how a heading relates to a query within a measured result set — it does not cause a page to rank or guarantee any position.

Related factors

• Exact Phrase in Body
• Keyword Count in Body

Part of the Factors reference · how RankGear measures · glossary.