two h1 tags

is that okay?

[eveningwalk]

I have 2 h1 tags (both relevant) on each page of my site. Will Google have a problem with that?

Thanks,
ew

[Vadim]

Disclaimer: Only Google knows how it works.

The Google algo changes often so it is hardly possible to get a definitive answer to this question.

However, Google usually encourage the good style and may filter out the spam suspicious deviations.

In general good style means one page per one topic. It means also one H1 tag per page.

Vadim.

[stinkfoot]

Hmm .. personally I would say that is what the <H2> tag was built for

[Monkscuba]

As far as I know if you have 2 h1 tags, a google spider treats them as if there was no heading. One h1 per page is the accepted format, right? Then as many h2's as you can cram in! :)

[Powdork]

Who cares what Google thinks?
If you feel two h1 tags are appropriate, that's what you should do. If you start chasing the algo, you'll never catch it. If you feel you shouldn't have two h1 tags because it's poor writing style, thats ok too. But Google shouldn't be a part of this equation.

[followgreg]

I've seen big SEO companies using that stuff, even 3 H1 tags ...not sure if it hurts.

[Powdork]

It wasn't long ago every one was talking about the oop, which was reported to occur when one had the keyword in the descriptive title and in the heading and you had everything formatted correctly and people linked to you with the keyword.

[Patrick Taylor]

This is pure speculation, but it could make sense if the only effect of more than one H1 would be the same as putting more words into a single one - diluting the value of the words used. So:

<h1>big widgets</h1>
<h1>red widgeroos</h1>

would be the same as:

<h1>big widgets red widgeroos</h1>

[texasville]

Two h1 tags is not good heirarchy on a page. An h2 tag should be utilized if you want emphasis on a subtopic. However, if it is two different subjects, you should consider splitting this into two different pages.

[g1smd]

I had a heading with some very long words in, and which always wrapped awkwardly at some resolutions however it was done... there was a choice of using a <br> tag or using two heading tags.

I used two heading tags. I'll let you know if I see any ranking problems with that.

[kaled]

As far as I know if you have 2 h1 tags, a google spider treats them as if there was no heading.

Would you care to cite your source or are you just guessing?

Incidentally, spiders simply collect data, they don't perform advanced filtering.

Kaled.

[BillyS]

W3 has some great information on the use of headers. You might want to see what they have to say as far as use:

[w3.org...]

If we understand what W3 has to say about the use of H1, then perhaps the best thing would be to be a bit objective about what might happen if you decided to use more than one H1 on a page...

According to W3, the H1 heading is supposed to be reserved for the most important level. So if you were to use more than one H1 (let's say two), then objectively we can say Google might treat the two headings as equals. If you were to use four H1 on a page, then all four would be equal.

These elements are supposed to create a hierarchy on the page. Use of multiple H1 elements, therefore creates a rather flat hierarchy (if that's possible). That might make it difficult for Google to figure out what the page is really all about and result in possibly lower ranking.

In practice, I reserve this element for the single most important heading on a page. I limit myself to one H1 element on each page.

700th post - cool.

[kaled]

Speaking as a programmer, I cannot see any way a decent algo will be confused by multiple <h1> tags. If you are reading heading tags to try to determine a document's a heirachical structure, when parsing the document you simply terminate the level (or levels) each time a <hn> tag is encountered with a higher priority than the current level.

Think of it this way, the document contains an implicit <h0> value that contains everything else.

Having said that, I doubt search engines bother to analyse heading structures - it would be a totally pointless waste of CPU power.

Kaled.

[BillyS]

[qquote]Having said that, I doubt search engines bother to analyse heading structures - it would be a totally pointless waste of CPU power. [/quote]

So Kaled votes that heading elements are not used in the algo at all. That's an opinion based on programming knowlege. For me, I still vote to use the structure as W3 outlines. Which I also think is easier on the reader.

[lammert]

I use two <h1> tags on many of my pages and have not seen any ranking problems at all. I use them in two separate table columns, so semantically seen each <h1> tag is the heading of that column content.

[kaled]

So Kaled votes that heading elements are not used in the algo at all.

WRONG
I said that it is unlikely that search engines analyse heading structures (i.e. the heirachical correctness). I certainly did not say that heading elements play not part in the algo.

Just for the record, search engines strive to produce relevant results - this may come as a shock to some people but relevancy is not determined by page structure. A beautifully structured page with rubbish content does not deserve to rank higher than than a poorly structured page with good content. However, it seems many webmasters hope that structure is important - presumably because their content isn't good enough.

Kaled.