Comments on: H1 or H2? How to Handle Headers?

By: Haruyoshi

Haruyoshi — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 15:23:00 +0000

In my opinion, never mind h1 or h2, each once is enough.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:27:45 +0000

@Mike, There is a brief note about search engine penalties for multiple h1s in the article, though perhaps a little too brief. In retrospect I wonder if I should have put a little more emphasis on that statement. It's something that people need to be aware of.

I wrote this post partly because I'm needing to optimize my current heading structure, it's a little flawed. Currently I don't have any h1s at all, and post titles are all h2s on every page. It will be a pain to update posts when I make the change...

By: Mike Robinson

Mike Robinson — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:47:35 +0000

From what I understand, SE’s will actually penalise you for using multiple H1’s (whether maliciously or not). This caused many SEO people to place everything in H2’s, which didn’t seem to have the negative effect. But, of course, this skipped the h1 and invalidated things.I didn’t read your post first time round when checking out the Devlounge one, but now I did I am glad to see I am not the only one who ponders what to do with supplementary (sidebar) content. Suffice to say, headings are greatly flawed…

By: Handling Headers: Where to Use h1 and h2 | Devlounge

Handling Headers: Where to Use h1 and h2 | Devlounge — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:01:51 +0000

[…] reason I’m bringing it up now is this post on the topic, over at Webmaster-Source. I’ve gotten several emails asking if Matt’s conclusion is the right one. Basically, […]

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 21:46:54 +0000

I think it is mainly up to personal preference, so long as you do it consistently, and don't try to spam search engines by making as many things as possible h1s.

By: Steven Clark

Steven Clark — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:10:11 +0000

I’m actually very similar to Richard. First, regardless that by the spec you can use more than 1 h1 element it strikes me (as a computer guy) as a strange information hierarchy to have 2 top level headings. That implies two pages. So I’m definately a single h1 guy. I would say that site name versus page name in h1 is probably a personal choice thing – my blog is using site name at present but the next design iteration may not. Both arguments have pros and cons on that one – and I think Google can get the information as long as you have good content and meaningful headers / structure so it’s probably not as important what level heading as much as it is important to have meaningful heading structure / hierarchy and supporting content. The tags themselves just explain hierarchy and what follows them. I tend to use h2 level headings in the sidebar or when I write content for new logical div sections of the page… if that makes sense. Just my 2 cents.

By: Richard

Richard — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:39:15 +0000

I’ve always put the site name in a h1, the page title h2, and then article sections in h3. Even when using a logo and not a site name I use the h1 and display: none. Not sure if its right, but it makes sense to me when I turn CSS off.