HTML5 multiple h1 tags

[coremediadesign]

When I run the On-Page Report Card it tells me that I should remove the multiple instances of H1 tags, even though the website is built using HTML5 and has hierarchical structure where each section / article has its own H1 tag.

This approach is completely legal with HTML5 and I'm just wondering what impact does it have on SEO and whether the On-Page Report Card recognises the HTML5 and processes it accordingly.

[marcinlejman]

Hi Sebastian,

well, straight from the source (Matt Cutts) - apparently, there's nothing particularly wrong with having multiple H1s, as long as you don't serious overdo it.

Hope it helps.

[coremediadesign]

Thanks Marcin,

In that case the only last question is whether the On-Page Report Card recognises the HTML5 syntax and processes it accordingly as it did point out that my code had multiple h1 tags - even though I only use these where they should be highlighting important sections of the page without abusing it.

[AlanMosley]

If you are using html5 and segmenting your page, yopu may be ok with google, but i doubt if you are going to rank well for more then one subject per page.

Bing on the other hand sees such pages as junk pages, and may not index them at all

http://thatsit.com.au/seo/reports/violation/the-page-contains-multiple-h1-tags

I assume that the page has an over all theme, i would use the H1 once and use h2 for each segment

[coremediadesign]

You see, this is where the confusion comes from. I've just read your article and it is actually saying something different than Matt Cutts have confirmed regarding h1 tags and Google.

I've also done some research online and most of the articles confirm that multiple h1 tags will NOT do any harm if used appropriately. But as you mention Bing might have a different view on this.

I personally like the idea of multiple h1 tags as it's really natural, when you read a paper you don't just have one main heading, but you have a heading for each section on the page.

Can I ask - where did you read about Bing penalising sites which use more than one h1 tag?

[Saijo.George]

I know this is an old post but .. Just a heads up the video was from 2009