Company name as H1, page topic as H2... Is it good or otherwise?

[AjiNIMC]

I need to choose between:

Option #1
----------
* Company name as h1 tag that appears on each page
* Page heading comes as h2 tag and sub topics as h3 tags

V/s

Option #2
---------
* Company name in normal font with styling to make it look good
* Page heading comes as h1 tag, sub topics as h2, h3 etc

Which option would you recommend?

Thanks,
Aji Issac

[Seb7]

There is no generic answer to this as it depends on the kind of website your trying to create. You first need to decide on how much you want your website be found via its company name. If this is important to you, then you should put this clearly at the top within a header tag. ie.option 1.

[HuskyPup]

One could ask is your company name a generic name or your widget keyword, if it is your major keyword then one could argue #1 however if you want your products spidered, listed and found then #2 is the correct way to do it.

To clarify, if you have a 100 page site why would you want 100 pages all being found for the same title?

[johnnie]

H1 should be the title / topic of the page.

[Wlauzon]

What Johnnie said, and it should also be the only H1 tag on the page.

[Hissingsid]

If folks are going to search for your site using company name as the search term, congratulations, on winning one of 400 top brands in the world. Otherwise get real, what matters is what the users will use to find your site.

The best way to deal with this is to use the company name as a logo image, keeps the client happy, and optimise for the terms you want the page to rank for.

I have competitors who used to optimise for "COMPANY Name widget services" because they were so intraspective and ego centric. Now they optimise for "widget services" realising that they can rank #1 for "COMPANY Name widget services" anyway without really trying.

Cheers

Sid

[AjiNIMC]

I will always recommend #2. I think templates should never have heading tags, template should have css elements for Aesthetics and sales but the document structure of page should be left to the content of the page.

Just wanted to use this thread to prove my point to some friend's client.

[HuskyPup]

Ahhhh...winning a bet by getting independent others to prove your argument!

Congratulations:-)

[AjiNIMC]

:) more than winning I wanted to ensure the best advice and I guess there is no better place than WebmasterWorld. Hope it helps many of the clients and web marketing companies. Thanks for all great points.

[ogletree]

It really does not matter Google has depreciated the heading tags because of spamming. There are many SEO rules from years ago that don't really apply any more but SEO's don't update best practices very often. As long as you have a good title and have the proper keywords on the page have good content, backlinks and good internal linking not much else is going to move you very far in the SERPS.

There is no secret on page formula that is going to shoot you up in the SERPS. The sad thing is that most SEO's think there is. Even if you had a copy of the onpage algo your not going to rank very well unless you have backlinks.

I get leads all the time that email me some "seo package" they got from another firm that is almost all busy work and will not help them rank for their terms at all. They might get some traffic from long tail but very few companies get top terms. I have to talk them down from the "pre packaged seo firms" I tell them do you want a bunch of fancy reports or do you want to make more money.

Nobody wants to do link building because it is hard work and takes a long time. True link building is a slow process. Very few people have that kind of patience.

[AjiNIMC]

More than SEO it is about the better structure. Proper Heading tags does improve usability. We don't care much about Google but we do care about what is better and somehow Google might also like good practices.

Regarding SEO packages, it is the demand that is forcing web marketing firms for pre-designed packs. While working with clients, reports serve as the vibe and accountability. A smart company will have it well recorded and will be able to get reporting within 20 mins every week.

With time and proper web marketing (along with improving the website, web services and business), once can reach the gold.