H1 Tags and HTML5

[bronxpad]

I have read that now you can have multiple h1 tags on a page without it negatively impacting SEO. Previously it was advised to only have 1 h1 tag on a page.

Example: with the new semantic mark up you could have separate h1 tags for the header, article, aside and footer.

Is this really the case?

[Matthew_Edgar]

Hi Joel,

Yes, you can use multiple h1 tags across a page. From what I've seen, it doesn't have much, if any, impact on your search performance. As for HTML5, it is completely valid to have multiple h1 tags or to structure it with an h1 per section.

All that said, I still prefer to have only one h1 tag per page. Realistically, each page can only have one heading that is the most important. However, this isn't about search or usability or programming requirements, it is just my preference because it helps me prioritize my content.

Thanks.

[mad2k]

Hi Joel,

According to Matt Cutts, Google doesn't penalize sites just for having multiple H1 tags, see: link

In my opinion they crawlers/indexers can be set to detect overuse of H2 tags and it is possible that Google can penalize for that. From usability point of view and good structured content I fully agree with Matthew.

And from SEO perspective ... how can you tell crawler bots what is most important on your page? Consistency of main factors: meta title - meta description - keyword - title (H1) - content structure an so on is crucial for your page.

Marek