H1 Tags

[wazza1985]

Quick and easy  most likely -

Just need to clear a few point. I understand each page within the site should only have one H1 tag which should be the most important one. I also believe these only effect google ranking very slightly? right?

Currently my CMS is system is pulling the H1 tag in from the page and automatically using the page heading that is on the page IE) the heading used for the content.

Should this be a keyword /  key phrase instead? and will it be duplicate if i used the same one on various pages in my site?

Cheers guys look forward to hearing your feedback

[CPU]

This is a common issue for CMS's and one I have faced too.

If whatever you put in the heading is used as the title then you will want to make sure that the heading is unique, relevant as both a heading and a title, ensure it is targeted at your key words or phrases BUT also as the heading will be spotted on the page by the user it must make sense for them too.

No point having a heading which confuses the user and sends them in the wrong direction.

Hope this helps.

[wazza1985]

Does it matter if you use the same H1 tag on various pages in the same site? or will this become duplicated and penalised by the search engines?

[CPU]

There wouldn't usually be an issue about using the same H1 tag on multiple pages but if with the CMS you are using  H1 tag = Title tag then you will end up with lots of duplicate titled pages. This reduces th opportunity for targeting multiple keywords and phrases across multiple pages.

As most pages will focus on a different subject or product, then most titles will be different and most H1's will be different.

The correlation between the existence of H1 tags and rankings has been shown in testing by guys at SEO Moz to be a low positive if I remember rightly so I wouldn't get too hung up about the H1, focus more on the Title.

Hope this helps.

[TellThemEverything]

In short: Ideally you'll have one H1 per page, and it will be unique across the site.

[StalkerB]

Having multiple

tags isn't an issue. Sometimes having multiple

tags is normal for a page and here's Matt Cutts weighing in on it - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIn5qJKU8VM

Also

tags aren't a strong ranking factor, check out these links for more info - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements - and - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-the-biggest-seo-mistakes-seomoz-has-ever-made - BONUS LINK - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/bing-vs-google-prominence-of-ranking-elements

Your

and your title should be editable independantly, though often they may be the same anyway.

Your titles should definitely be different across all of your pages as the <title>tag is still a strong ranking factor. Having multiple pages with the same <title> is not advised.</p></title>

[Dan-Petrovic]

Use H tags as they are meant to be used but if you can nicely embed your phrase within that would be great. How to use H tags? Same as you would with indentation structure of a bullet point list. Have them indicate document's topical structure.

For example:

-H1: Vehicles
--H2: Cars
---H3: Sedans
---H3: SUVs
--H2: Motorbikes
---H3: Dirtbikes
---H3: Roadbikes
----H4: Harley Davidson
---H3: Sportsbikes 
----H4: Suzuki
-----H5: SFV650
------H6: SFV650 Engine Specifications

[Hondaspeder]

It effects it more than just very slightly, and depending on what kind of site you're running it should either be the blog post title, the sitename, or product name.

It won't be penalized officially; the only penalty is that you could get more juice if they weren't duplicates.

[Hondaspeder]

nice answer!

[division1]

I've seen couple websites with 3 x H1 tags on each page. And they were coming up on first page results. Looks like it wasn't penalized. But I'm following the rule one H1 per page.

[Dan-Petrovic]

This will not be problem from the penalty point of view - the question is if the page value. What is new or unique about the page that is also about the same topic?

On another note observe that Google monitors and warns about duplicate TITLE and META description tags in Google Webmaster Tools. H tag duplicates are not included. That would have to indicate that H tag is not as important to them.