Do you use two <h1>s? (one for logo, one for title?)

[londrum]

Imagine that I've got a site called "example keyword keyword", and the page title is "blah blah another keyword"

Ideally you'd want to put the page title in the <h1> tag, I suppose, but then what do you do with the site title (which is in the logo, linking back to the homepage). I would quite like that to be in a <h1> tag too.

How do you go about it on your site? Do you put your site name/homepage logo in the <h1> tag? Or the individual page name?

I am thinking of sticking them both in a <h1> tag.

[lucy24]

Why would your sitename need to be in any kind of <hx> at all? It's always the same, so it conveys no fresh information to the search engine.

[tangor]

Think Highlander (film fun) for the answer: There can be only ONE... and on the web that means only one H1 per PAGE. Now also includes Section, Article, Ccaption... but that also means writing pages in full HTML semantics, etc.

That's the long answer. Short answer is ONE H1 per page.

[londrum]

Saw a little video by matt cutts where he says it's okay using more than one. That is what got me thinking about using two

[ronin]

It used to be more straightforward when there was only a single <hx> tree hierarchy per page - in this instance there could only be one <h1>, as tangor says.

But if I understand correctly, HTML5 allows for multiple <hx> tree hierarchies per page. So, for instance, the first heading in a <section> halfway down the page can be <h1>.

I'm still a bit fuzzy on this - maybe someone who is more familiar with HTML5 can shed light?

[ronin]

Ah, okay, just found an article on the web by K. Bracey, which gives a comprehensive overview of what I was referring to above - specifically the difference between <hx> hierarchies in earlier versions of HTML and how <hx> hierarchies work now in HTML5. Search for The Truth About Multiple H1 Tags in the HTML5 Era.

That said... there's quite a debate in the comments beneath the article, emphasising that HTML5's newly reconceptualised <hx> hierarchy structure is no more than hypothetical and is not currently understood by any graphical browsers or assistive technology user agents.

[piatkow]

But if I understand correctly, HTML5 allows for multiple <hx> tree hierarchies per page. So, for instance, the first heading in a <section> halfway down the page can be <h1>.

Just as it always has been. Physically possible but not necessarily good practice.

[tangor]

One of the reasons why HTML is so confusing to many... and to the W3C itself: What is a document? How is a document structured?

These questions continue to this day.

It did not help that early on HTML was subverted regarding "title" and "heading" as the title is what's displayed NOT IN THE DOCUMENT but the browser frame. Whew! That was a mistake! (Documents, from that point forward did not ever have a chance to have a true "title" element visible ON THE PAGE.

I use H1 as the TITLE of the page, as it was semantically intended. Period. Never failed me yet. But back in the old days the Hn series was traditionally, and tragically, used as FONT LAYOUT. That practice has persisted to this day. Wrong way to use it... but very understandable as humans---and webmasters in particular---are pretty lazy folks. :)

Thus, the penchant to use Hn as Font Layout WILL CONTINUE and the actual semantic meaning of each has been obliterated by common use. No MEANING remains and no matter what HTML5 might say, documents will be read incorrectly in accessibility mode, etc. I think (believe) that Bing in particular has recognized this coding paradigm and gives no additional weight to any Hn... going for the WORD not the markup. G might follow but I wouldn't bet on it.

So, I repeat, there can be only one H1 per page. Semantically or Font Layout. I have no doubts that 20 years from now we'll still be talking about this because there are no BUILT-IN (Big, Small come close) font layouts that newbies will logically jump on. The default Hn settings are like white on rice for layout... and because they don't know better.

Will anything be done? Not sure. I'm tossing out a number, off the top of my head, plus minus 30% that at least 75% of all pages on the web are NOT semantically correct... Hn wise.

(Why this topic keeps coming up, I don't know. After H1 there's all those other lovely Hn's to use!)

Oh, news flash to all, H1 doesn't have the weight value it did in 1999-2000. That myth has been debunked over and over...

[piatkow]

I use H1 as the TITLE of the page, as it was semantically intended. Period. Never failed me yet. But back in the old days the Hn series was traditionally, and tragically, used as FONT LAYOUT. That practice has persisted to this day. Wrong way to use it... but very understandable as humans---and webmasters in particular---are pretty lazy folks. :)

Mea culpa. I have old pages where I have done that and really can't be bothered to go back and bring things up to best practice.

I did get caught many years ago by starting a page with an h2 as I wanted the text smaller than a standard h1. The page didn't rank where it should for niche arguments which finally prompted me to read up on CSS.

[lucy24]

In my first few years of doing ebooks I routinely used <hx> on the title page and similar for size. But never on my real pages. Well, almost never. Couple years back I cleaned up a handful of <h4> that should have been <br><span class = "subhead">.

Does g### truly not care about absent h1's*, or have they simply given up on me? Who knows :) gwt never utters a peep.

When you're reading something like a blog (from any big-name CMS) with multiple articles on the same page, is each article an <h1>? That kind of thing would be standardized, so if it occurs once, it occurs millions of times.


* For structural reasons, most pages start with an h2. So shoot me. Admittedly my target audience is about 50,000 people worldwide and is not exactly hotly contested...

[londrum]

When you're reading something like a blog (from any big-name CMS) with multiple articles on the same page, is each article an <h1>? That kind of thing would be standardized, so if it occurs once, it occurs millions of times.

this is what i was thinking too.
normally i would put them all as H2, because i was brought up thinking that having multiple H1's on one page was bad practice. but then what do you put as a H1? in my case, it can only be the website title.
but if matt cutts says its alright having multiple H1's, and it makes sense to have them without being spammy, then i think i'm going to go for it.

i know that H1s dont carry as much weight these days (does any on-page stuff carry much weight anymore?)

[piatkow]

My very rough rule of thumb: If you would put in a page throw in hard copy then its h1, if you wouldn't then its not.

[ronin]

but if matt cutts says its alright having multiple H1's, and it makes sense to have them without being spammy, then i think i'm going to go for it.

Before you do, londrum, do read The HTML5 Document Outline is a dangerous fiction by HTML5 editor Steve Faulkner.

It's an eye-opener.

[Narsto]

I usually use them on different places as font layout. Good to know that they are meant for titles and should only be used once per page.

[KiethHoyt]

I usually use only 1 <h1> tag per page, and the rest, if need, are set at <h2> or lower.

[johnkingx]

yo can only have one h1 tag so it better be the keyword u want to rank for that page not a logo. you can use a img tag if the logo is text and remember to put the title/alt attributes

[eurohttp]

One <h1> or two, doesn't matter. You can try to add h1.example tag in css for multiple h1-ones

[audrey]

i think u use header tags by using css

[Mroffline]

The SEO rule is one H1 per page. This header should include your top priority keywords (2-3)

[bwnbwn]

This is an old post but I have noticed many more sites using multiple h2 tags for font purposes on the same page. I assume because they are lazy, have no clue on what a CSS is, or just a newbie.

Our new hire marketing manager had 9 h2 tags on one page. I am like OK here I go again. More on that here.
[webmasterworld.com...]

[Marshall]

The following are from posts I made a long time ago

July 10, 2007 If you look at the tags from a "human" perspective, you could compare them to a book. An <h1> would represent the title of a chapter while <h2>-<h6> represents the sub-chapters as in a Table Of Contents.
If you are looking for something specific, you first go to the chapter, but it is the sub-chapter where you will find exactly what you want. Does this make an <h1> tag less important? I cannot say for sure, but IMHO, if any SE looks at a page as a human would, I believe the 2-6 tags are more specific to search and finding what you want. [webmasterworld.com...]
and

Sept 26, 2001 Braille readers and speech synthesizers emphasize things depending on the tag. As such, <b> has a different connotation than <strong>. They see <b> as a bolded word and <strong> as an important word.

With the <H> tag, they should follow a specific order within the category they cover. Say your category has header section and four subsections and your first <H> tag is <H2>. The next for the subsections should be <H3> or something smaller: <H4>, <H5> or <H6>. All the subsections can be the same <H> tag, but you shouldn't go <H3> then <H4> then back to <H3> because it will interpret the <H4> as a new section. Make sense? Since I tend to give visual examples - I use to be a teacher among other things - it goes like this:
TOPIC-
<H2>
<H3>
<H3>
<H4>
NEW TOPIC -
<H2>
<H3>
<H4>
<H5>
and so on....

WAI also emphasizes not to use <H> tags merely to bold things. [webmasterworld.com...]

These are as relevant today as they were when originally posted.

Marshall

[tangor]

These days with the "new" markup of Hx should be:

Page
H1 title of page

Section (of Page)
H1 title of section

Caption (op image on Page, or inside any Section)
H1 title of caption

That's the semantics of it... but it all boils down to this:

ONE H1 as the title of the PAGE (not a logo). Anything after that is h2, h3, etc UNLESS you have your page divided into SECTIONS in which case each section AFTER the page title H1 can start with an h1 (or a caption).

Your website is not h1 (example.com)
Your example.com/PAGETITLE is an h1

As a result of all these new tweaks to HTML semantics the value/use of H1 has turned to farmer's friend.

There truly is a correct way to do this... reality is there's no fixin' stupid... and that started a long time ago with TITLE not being the actual title of the page.

[sandysan]

No...
Its not a proper way to use the structural language...

H1 should be used for top-level heading in an article.
and h2, h3,..etc for sub-headings of appropriate levels.

This is how I use.

[fscanf]

I have always used an h1 just for the title page