Would search engines penalise two h1 tags?

<h1>title</h1>..<h1>sub-title</h1>?

[bondjamesbond]

Hi,

I was just wondering would search engines penalise two h1 tags? I am not trying to generate a better search engine placement, I just have two titles that I want to give equal importance. Would it be safe to use two h1 tags and then use h2 tags for my other items? Or should I use one h1, one h2, and then use h3's?

Cheers!

[shasan]

I think conceptually you should only have 1 <h1> tag per page, I could be wrong.

however, you are allowed to have multiple h2, h3, h4 etc...

So maybe you can come up with a 'main' title for the page and put in h1 and then use h2 for the other two?

Actually this may even benefit your SEO since some people say that h1's don't mean as much as they used to and that SE's look at h2's more.

[bondjamesbond]

Thanks for the advice shasan.

What I have is the title of the site, and then the title of the page. Intially I opted for h1 for the title of the site and then h2 for the title of the page and any other titles or "headlines" on the page could be h3. But after thinking about it I thought that while the title of the site is important, it doesn't change, forcing the acutal titles of the pages to a h2.

Hence my problem trying to give both the site title and actual page titles h1's. Reading your advice shasan, maybe I should stay with what I am doing - placing the site title in a h1 and the page titles in a h2. Although this does seem like a missed oppuntunity, as I am wanting the page to be found by the page title rather than the site name.

[aus_dave]

I am wanting the page to be found by the page title rather than the site name.

I think you already answered your own question. Forget the title of your site, as you build inbound links you will tend to rank highly for that term by default anyway.

Use your keywords in the title tags, h1 and link text to that page and you will get good results.

PS If you haven't already read this thread [webmasterworld.com] then you should.

[trillianjedi]

I have a couple of test pages running to try and work out H1 dilution ratio and any penal effects in google.

I'm still watching and collating info. For more background see this thread:-

[webmasterworld.com...]

TJ

[bondjamesbond]

aus_dave and trillianjedi thanks for your advice. As you recommend I will remove the site name from the h1 tag and have the page title in the h1, with other page elements in a h2.

Thanks!