Are Site-wide H1 Tags in WordPress Good or Bad?
Questions from Readers
The great thing about writing our book, WordPress 3.0 Search Engine Optimization, is we get to hear from all those readers who have taken our material and put it to work in the field. Today, we’ve got a fascinating question from Robert, who asks that question we confront every day in one way or another: Just how far should I trust Google’s sophistication?
Hi Michael,
I’m currently reading your Packt book on WordPress SEO, and I have a quick question about HTML5 and the way it uses header tags. Your book says to use only one H1 tag per page, which makes sense. However, HTML5 advocates multiple H1 tags per page, as long as each is contained in a separate section/header.
Worse yet, the first H1 tag on a page is usually a wrapper around the home link logo and contains the same meaningless title text on every page. You can see a typical example at CSS3maker.com :
<header>
<h1 id=”logo”><a href=”index.html” title=”CSS 3.0 Maker”>Css 3.0 Maker</a></h1>
</header>
Most SEO bloggers assume single H1 tags are a thing of the past. Based on your experience, has there been any evidence that Google/Yahoo interpret HTML5 content any differently than HTML/XHTML?
If not, should I remove the header and h1 tags around my logo anchor tag? My site looks like the CSS3maker code above. And like them, I don’t have anything else in my header, so if I remove the H1 tag, wouldn’t I also just scrap the header tag? I have a meaningful H2 tag in my content section, which could be elevated to an H1 tag.
Thanks,
RobertBTW, I’m really enjoying your book.
Robert,
This may be a cop out…but does this help?
I think google is tuned in enough to ignore site-wide h1 tags. One of my philosophies is “packaging”–make it so brain-dead easy for a search engine that it can’t POSSIBLY get confused. We are sort of on-page nerds when it comes to that stuff. Most of the pages we create are pretty perfect, at least on the page.
Do we, in our SEO business, remove site-wide h1 tags around logos and site names in the header? Absolutely we do, but I don’t think it’s the kiss of death if you don’t. Remember one thing: google has to fit its algorithm so that it doesn’t punish sites for small mistakes–otherwise, it would punish 80% of the web or more.
I am very glad you are enjoying the book!
Michael
