Breadcrumb as <H1>

[DansSitesRScrewed]

Hi, I Wanted to get everyone's thoughts on this idea. I noticed one of our competitors is using their breadcrumb location as their <h1>.

Example is

Home > level1 > <h1>keyword/category title</h1>

They are using <spans> as each section. My site uses <li>s.

So my question is, do you feel this is a good idea? It does seem to bring the h1 to the top of the page.

Or maybe a better question is, where is the optimal place to have your <h1>s?

Thanks
Dan

[Str82u]

Have you tried validating the code that is written with H1 in the breadcrumbs? I'm not suggesting validation is scripture but it might give you an idea of whether is acceptable by standards or not and that might suggest what certain search engines might "think".

On the other hand, it might be a loophole. How is your competitor doing after they added that? Did you see a big rise in their traffic/SERPs or nothing at all? Also, have you used the structured markup tool to see if it recognizes the code? It probably would.

[DansSitesRScrewed]

I looked at it in the structured markup and although they are trying to get it to recognize, it does not.

And yes, they have definitely rose in rankings for certain keyword terms.

This is the actual code, without info though.

<div id="breadcrumbs-full-width">
<div id="Breadcrumbs" class="Breadcrumbs marginSidesAuto hn-sec-med-txt paddingTopOnly10px" xmlns:v="http://rdf.data-vocabulary.org/#">
<div style="width: 150%;">
<span typeof="v:Breadcrumb">
<a class="standard-style text-small" href="http://www.nothing.com/" rel="v:url" property="v:title"><i>Hayneedle</i></a>
</span>
<span class="Breadcrumgs icon-right-open-mini"><span class="display0"></span></span>
<h1 class="standard-style text-small" style="font-weight:normal; font-size: 14px;"><i>The Keyword Here.</i></h1>
<script type="text/javascript">
(function(){
var metaElem = document.createElement('meta');
metaElem.setAttribute('property','eb:categoryPath');
metaElem.setAttribute('content','Nothing/Keyword/');
$('head').append(metaElem);
})();
</script> 
</div>
</div>
</div>

[adder]

What is the thinking behind wanting the H1 to be part of breadcrumbs? What are you trying to achieve?

I wouldn't do it because it defies the purpose of H1.

Heading tags should give the page content a structure and hierarchy. Ideally, H1 is the article title or the product name (if ecommerce site) and its optimal place is where it makes the most sense.

Navigation is an entirely separate section of the page. Best practices of handling breadcrumbs/navigation are outlined here:
[support.google.com...]

[tangor]

Bad in the old days of the net some used the h tags for "style" purposes because of the default font sizes. These days most folks use the h tags correctly, for document structure. That does not seem to be the case here, and I am confused why anyone wouuld think a h tag in navigation would make a difference.

There should be only one h1 tag per page, or section, of any document, and a breadcrumb navigation, by definition, is not part of a document, merely a path to a page.

[DansSitesRScrewed]

Not saying I was going to do it. I just noticed someone else was. Didn't know if it was some kind of manipulation thing happening. They are ranking well.