Viget Inspire

For years I used H1 as the name of the site and the H2 as the page title, but recently I’ve moved towards using H1s for the page title and just wrapping the site name / logo in a container div; it was the usability of screen readers that changed my mind.

Apparently, it gets really old to hear the name of the site you’re on over and over again when you’re navigating via headers with a screen reader. That usability question pretty much settles it for me.

Both great points! What tag would you then suggest you should use for the site’s logo (assuming a lot of sites do have a logo)?

I only use 1 h1.

“with H1 as the most important”
-www.w3g.org

To me the h1 is, what this page is all about. The fundamental reason why this page exists. h2’s are subs of h1, h3 of h2’s and so on.

For me having multiple h1’s doesn’t make sense.

You have an h1 at the top.

<h1>Darren’s Resume</h1>

<h1>Darren’s Eductation</h1>
<h2>University</h2>
Blah

<h2>College</h2>
Blah

<h2>High School</h2>
blah

This doesn’t really make sense. Because everything below “Darren’s Resume” all has to do with “Darren’s Resume”. The h1 encapsulates what this page is about.

it should be

<h1>Darren’s Resume</h1>
<h2>Darren’s Education</h2>
<h3>University</h3>
Blah

<h3>College</h3>
Blah

<h3>High School</h3>
BlahM/p>

<h2>Darren’s Hobbies</h2>

----- And so on. All the headings are heirarchical under the h1 which is the most important heading.

Anyways that’s my opinion and rant. As long as people are creating the sites in the best interest as many users as possible. (including, screen readers and spiders)

@Keith

“You have to think about why you’re using headings semantically”

It’s all about semantics. Nothing I mentioned was about SEO. It was all about semantics and for users who hear the site rather than view the site. It just so happens a lot (if not all) of what screen readers see is what a spider see’s.

My mark up is all about making the document make sense.

That’s a very interesting point. How the h1 is presented to screen readers. I just realised that on many of the sites I’ve done it’ll be the name of the site repeated at the beginning of the document every single time.

I will have to take this into better consideration from now on.

@Paul Randall

“The H1 element defines a level-one heading. A document generally should have exactly one H1 element to mark the most important heading.”

-quoted from your site.

This is what I was trying to say but wasn’t explaining it very well :P

“Mark Aaron Murnahaan said on 03/22 at 07:33 AM

My take on it is this: Google the term ... H1 tag. You will see one I wrote a long time ago right there on top.”

Actually, if you look now, you’re #2, right under the w3schools.

About the h1 debate. There should be NO debate. Here’s why;

H1 should be used for a logo and major headings within an HTML document, IMO. To each their own, use them according to how you want to use them or how the client wants you to use them in some cases.

This is why there are 6 levels to heading tags and ways through CSS to style them accordingly and to what the designer/site owner wants.

The fact that somebody’s asking if it’s okay to have more than one H1 on a page shows that they don’t know how to properly use header tags in the first place. It is amazing that in the web development world people still don’t know how to use HTML to properly structure their information. I use H1’s for the name of the entire site and H2’s for page titles and PHP to blend them together to create the content of the TITLE tag.  In my article at: http://developer.cmzmedia.com/?p=242 I demonstrate that this method does not harm SEO.

As Matt says in his video it is okay to have more than one H1 on a page . . . if it makes sense. The question is: How do you tell if it makes sense? The answer is: if the content in the multiple H1’s has equal weight as header content.

My blog entry goes into more detail. I don’t want to repeat too much info here. But, yes, I’m confident that it gives valuable info most people haven’t considered.

I linked to my blog entry that clears up all this H1 debate but clearly nobody intends to read it.

Mark, your article is good insofar that it gets people to start using header tags as opposed to doing stuff like using P tags and adding classes to them like “headerText” that will then just make the text a little bigger while still not cluing the search engines in to the fact that it really is a header. But your article does not take into account that there is more than one header tag and that the search engines read down to at least level 4 headers and take that info into account when ranking pages. It also does not take into account that you can create a custom TITLE tag for a page by blending the content of various header tags.

I understand. That is all fine. I’m not trying to beat anybody into submission, just trying to help people see the finer points. I think it’s perfectly valid to look at the H1 issue all on its own but when I see the discussion that has been taking place where specific website examples are not referred to then I also see that the best clarification of truth is not being arrived at. I mention two examples in my blog entry of how H1’s are handled. They are handled a little differently in a way that makes sense for each case. I’ve wanted to add a third case and use your blog as an example. You have your entry about H1’s and the title of the entry reflects that. I think that is one case where you want the title of that entry to be the H1 because it is more important than the name of your blog (which also happens to be your name). You are saying, “In this case my personal name is not as important as what this particular entry is about,” and I agree with that with the proviso that that is likely to be the case only with blogs where somebody’s proper name is the name of the entire blog. I know I’m getting into nuances here but the nuances are what we have to be aware of if we want to arrive at truth.

The other reason I keep harping on this issue is that people seem to be discussing it as though what you put in your H1 is the only possible thing that could affect SEO but, from everything I can tell, refusing to look at other closely related issues is going to warp your understanding of the one issue.

“don’t make me try and find sources, please”

My own experience shows that the content of the TITLE tag is very important and I have given examples. I’ve mentioned a case where I create a TITLE tag by blending the H3 and then the H1 and that improved SEO immensely for that particular blog. With other sites I run that wouldn’t be the wisest course of action.

People don’t want to see the finer points here. They want to act like there are two options and two options only: You either make the name of your company or its logo your H1 or you make the title of a specific article within the larger site the H1. Then people quickly throw out their one reason why they feel for one side or the other. Then they get exhausted with the debate and throw their hands up in the air and go, “Really, just do whatever you want with the H1. There’s really no way to scientifically tell what you should do with it. It’s all a matter of opinion.” When I see people not picking up the finer points it’s a little disheartening.

any idea what’s up with the windowboxing on youtube hd videos all of a sudden?

“Your H1 is the post important heading on your page so I never would use it as your company name. I would style my company name as a p class with a style on it and use my H1 to tell people what that page is about.”

I give up. You can give good, clear, helpful information to people and it still goes completely ignored. Without getting into the H1 debate itself again, one thing wrong with the prior post, and I’m only pointing out one thing, is that it proves there are web designers out there who use P tags with classes added to them to create headers rather than using header tags in the way they should.