HTML5 & the doc outline algorithm

[Fasthosts]

Hi

My web team are currently working on an updated site using Drupal and have asked me the following question:

Is more than one H1 tag with the same value an issue for SEO with HTML5 and the doc outline algorithm?

Can anyone help with this please? I appriciate any responses.

Thanks in advance.

Chris

[WesleySmits]

Hey Chris,

What would be the function of the multiple H1 tags on a single page?
The h1 tag should be used for the heading of the particular page is on. So it should be a short title for the entire page.

If you need multiple h1 tags because you have several different subject within the page then you might think about splitting the content over several pages. This will help your rankings for those pages as well because they are more specialised around a certain subject.

Hope i anwered your question. Let me know if you have more questions or if anything was unclear.

[Fasthosts]

Thanks, Wesley Smits.

The sticking point which I am trying to address is 'multiple h1 headings with the same value', therefore, I think maybe I could of phrased the question better. This is the amended question:

So is having more than one h1 on a page with the same value going to have a negative SEO impact?

Currently in the templates, our duplicate h1 would be way further down in the page structure and therefore the first h1 creates the top level heading and the second the heading for a section lower down the page.

Any thoughts on this?

[WesleySmits]

If the different h1 tags are all about different subjects and they are in different sections then i think there should be no problem.:)

[DaveSottimano]

HTML5 allows for multiple h1's in header groups - it's totally fine. Read more here: http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/fixing-seo-problems-with-html5/

So is having more than one h1 on a page with the same value going to have a negative SEO impact?

<header>

If I have too much of the same copy on the page

</header>

Is this unique enough?

<header>

If I have too much of the same copy on the page

</header>

If the text in both of the two H1 tags makes your page more than 70% duplicate (that's an arbitrary number btw), I'd say you'd have an issue. I suspect this is going to be very unlikely and that you won't have a problem. I don't fully understand why you'd want to repeat the same text, but I'd encourage you to use variants of the keywords in the top h1.

Good luck!