Keyword not in h1

Will you be able to rank well for a keyword that is not placed in the H1 tag but everywhere else e.g. title, h2, alt.
I am creating a page for a location but the keyword cannot naturally be part of the H1.

You see, Google will often consider your <h1> while optimizing search results to make them more relevant. It's quite important to have keywords in <h1>, but it won't necessarily make you rank much better.

My question to you is, why can't you just switch <h2> with <h1>? Just switch tags and adjust CSS accordingly.

That is great advice, I will do that.

what if I added two H1's and used the keyword in the second one that does not appear as the page title?

I dont think its necessary. Plenty of results out there show this now. I think if you have a variant of the main keyword that makes sense it will do just as well and equally if you have a synonym of the keyword in H1 it will also do well. There are other more important factors - like your backlinks.

There is a great article on ahrefs blog that gives evidence of some very competative keywords where the top results dont even mention the keyword they rank for in title / h1 etc:
https://ahrefs.com/blog/on-page-seo/

davids355 said:

I dont think its necessary. Plenty of results out there show this now. I think if you have a variant of the main keyword that makes sense it will do just as well and equally if you have a synonym of the keyword in H1 it will also do well. There are other more important factors - like your backlinks.

There is a great article on ahrefs blog that gives evidence of some very competative keywords where the top results dont even mention the keyword they rank for in title / h1 etc:
https://ahrefs.com/blog/on-page-seo/

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Are backlinks as important these days though? I thought Google were using other metrics, such as social media, to measure SERPs. I could be wrong. I don't invest a huge deal of time in backlinks anymore as my site seems to get shared naturally. I found once my links were shared on social media my rankings and traffic from Google improved significantly.

DrPorn said:

Are backlinks as important these days though? I thought Google were using other metrics, such as social media, to measure SERPs. I could be wrong. I don't invest a huge deal of time in backlinks anymore as my site seems to get shared naturally. I found once my links were shared on social media my rankings and traffic from Google improved significantly.

Click to expand...

The whole google system was built on backlinks....backlinks will always be relevant as far as google goes... the type of backlinks may vary just as we've seen the transition from backlinks of any sort to niche related backlinks to DA and PA and all that...everything relevant to google has to do with backlinks ...social shares are really backlinks as well...if u were to implement other types of backlinks to add to ur social shares I'm sure your sites will skyrocket from where it is now or solidify its dominance more

Sure you can rank without, but ideally you would wanna have it in h1 too, it would make ranking a bit easier.

Adding to the above..
Google considers showing relevant content to its users as the top most priority as on 2016.They are improving everyday to gain accuracy on the relevancy. That is the reason the searched keywords are highlighted in SERPs and social signals are given top priority and niche relevant back links carry more weight and that is the same reason blog commenting and reviews were give higher preferences in deciding ranking factor.It all boils down to relevance!
Apart from all the factors above, the content on your site is still the KING. How do you make your content even more relevant? by adding GOOD keyword optimized content (both text and images) and clearly defining the headings on pages.(Google considers a good heading gives a brief to the users, about the content that they are going to view/read).Based on my experience <h1> is still considered as the heading for the page content.
So its always a good practice and benefits in the long run,to use keyword in h1