H1 or no H1

[mcmrob]

Imagine having a main page with several headlines. Some of these headlines describe the subject of the page, containing your target keywords, like, for example, "Widgets Depot" and "An Introduction to Widgets". Others describe something more general, like, for example, a "Latest News" header.

All these headers should look the same on the page, but should not receive equal weight in the eye of the search engine.

Would it be considered cheating if you would place the "widget" keyword-headers within H1 tags, and the more general headers within DIVs, and then use CSS to make them look the same on the page?

So, for example, you would have the following styles..

.big { font-size: 18px; }
h1 { font-size: 18px; }

..and the following headers:

<h1>Widget Depot</h1>
Dummy dummy dummy dummy dummy dummy dummy.

<div class="big">Latest News</div>
Dummy dummy dummy dummy dummy dummy dummy.

I could put the more general headers in H1 tags as well, but I'm afraid it will diminish the value of the headers with the "widget" keyword. But, using the technique in the example above, I would technically be showing the search engines something different than my visitors. In the eye of the search engines, the H1 tags are bigger on my page than the headers I placed within DIVs.

Could this possibly have any effect on rankings, or am I just paranoid?

[JayC]

>> Would it be considered cheating if you would place the "widget" keyword-headers within H1 tags, and the more general headers within DIVs, and then use CSS to make them look the same on the page?

Using CSS you can change the appearance of any headers. So why not use one H1 per page, then use H2, H3, etc. as appropriate?

>> In the eye of the search engines, the H1 tags are bigger on my page than the headers I placed within DIVs.

That's nothing to worry about.

[grandpa]

Hi mcmrob

The H tags should describe the outline of your page content. I would tend to used H2 thru H6 instead of DIV (as in your example). All of the tags can be styled for appearance without fear of penalty. There's a recent discussion along the same lines over here [webmasterworld.com] that may be helpful.

[mcmrob]

Thanks for that!