Is it alright to use multiple h1 tags on the same

Question

I have a webpage that I use h1 tags multiple times within various DIVs and I style h1 for each div to be the appropriate size.

For example...

#content h1 {
  font-size:22px;
}

#left-nav h1 {
  font-size:14px;
}

#content .recent-news h1 {
  font-size:16px;
}

Is this alright? I am worried about SEO.

What is the best way to go about this? Or am I worrying about nothing?

Answer 1

I try to have only one H1 on the page and have it almost but slightly re-arranged from the content of the title tag / H1 is the the main idea of an individual page every thing else should be an h2 tag and Lower....

Answer 2

Semantically, I prefer using one h1 on the page, mainly for the title of the page. It probably doesn't matter too much with SEO, and with the way html is going with HTML5, the generic header tag will make it much simpler and this argument obsolete.

Answer 3

In general, you should only have one h1 per page, and that h1 should succintly represent the content on that page. As long as you are willing to style with CSS, find out which level of headings (h2, h3, h4, etc) that properly represent the headings you want to use, and then style them instead.

Answer 4

In trying to answer the same question I posted this question which may have some useful information. My concern with using the same H1, H2, H3 in differnt places is that unless you ALWAYS specify a 'parent' style as you did in your example* - then you can run into problems.

Dilemma in deciding how to create CSS for H1, H2, H3 etc.

* thats to say you never define 'h1' by itself

Answer 5

I think its good SEO practice to place an H1 tag at the top of every block element on my page, but thats just me. Of course this H1 tag should contain information relevant to the keywords/topics you are targeting.

This is a very effective SEO method I have found, so the people telling you not to do this are trying to keep you from joining in on our winnings.

Answer 6

In my opinion, you don't need to worry, its ok to do it like this.

H1 designates part of your contents to be a first level heading. So if you have a first level heading in your navigation div (e.g. <H1>Navigation Menu</H1>), of course that should be #nav h1.

If you should have several H1s within your contents depends: If you have a blog and every entry has its own heading, those would be H1s. However, if your blog itself has a heading (e.g. <H1>My Blog!</H1>), the blog entry heading should be an H2.

But that is only theory. Go for what is readable, semantic markup. You can best decide on that by looking at your html and asking yourself: 'Is it readable? Would the readability improve if I did it the other way?' The answer will vary from project to project.