Thanks for all your responses....I didn't expect this topic to be so
clouded.
For me and this particular site I'm working on, the problem still
remains....while Jason's article is well written, it doesn't use any
*governing body (eg. W3C/Google) references* as basis for it's
conclusions...it is merely an opinion. An Information Architecture
opinion. Sure, I agree with alot of the article and completely
understand the opinion but it is still.....an opinion.
Semantic structure is very much about opinion and interpretation. My
personal interpretation of this common problem was (and still is) that
there is no reason why multiple H1s can't be used on one page *AND no
reason* (semantic/IA/SEO/common sense) why an H1 can't wrap the logo. My
interpretation is that it is logical and important.
Having said that, I was ready to heed the advice of many on this thread
and remove the H1 around the logo as it seemed to be the general
consensus....but there seems to be a number of people who disagree and
I'm still yet to read anything from Google or W3C that says it is,
indeed, bad practice. Google, themselves (as the youTube video explains)
says it is *not bad *practice.
H1 denotes a heading. This I acknowledge. From a semantic point of view,
maybe the logo is not a heading at all.....or maybe it is the premier
heading. Depends on whether you view a web page as a plain text document
or an interactive piece of media. In an interactive page, can a heading
not be *something other than text? A logo perhaps?
*
To answer a few pointed questions:
"Maybe they should listen to the SEO expert they've already spoken
to..." - from Darren Lovelock.
I generally make a point of not believing everything I read or hear, so
excuse me for having an opinion different to that of a so-called SEO
expert and following up my opinion.
It seems, outside of Google index engineers, no-one really knows exactly
what effect page elements and content have on search results...SEO
experts seem to be professionals who have come up with a "best guess"
system.
In reference to: "Did they see it on some 'SEO's website and think 'they
must know what they are doing so I'll copy them'? LOL"
Yes Darren, I have seen it on many sites, many large sites that spend
tens of thousands of $$$ every year on SEO.
Are you suggesting that your knowledge of web design/IA/SEO come purely
from W3C guidelines and Google spec sheets?
Are you suggesting you are not influenced by the design/IA/semantic
structure/SEO methods of massive online companies?
Wow, that is impressive....the purity of your knowledge must be
profound. It must be amazing to talk with you one-on-one.
Some examples for you to mull over:
Top tier (pretty big) Australian sites:
- www.theage.com.au
- www.smh.com.au
- www.mycareer.com.au
- www.domain.com.au
- www.drive.com.au
International sites:
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/
I love this line: "...using the the method I and many other good web
designers have adopted:"
Anyways, enough Darren bashing....
Re: Adam Martin (writing after having a few afternoon bevvies in Thailand):
"In saying this I don't believe in focussing on SEO - no point in
getting the search engines find you if you only lose the customer when
they come to your site. I always focus on the customer and the
information they want to find. Customer Optimisation will always pay off
much more than SEO can ever dream of - 1 qualified customers is much
better than 100 non qualified."
I love the way this is written - definitely puts things in perspective....
Thankyou all for your responses. Many well spoken and informative people
on this list, which I appreciate.
* Christian Fagan
* Fagan Design
* fagandesign.com.au
* p: (+613) 9314-1841
Oliver Boermans wrote:
2009/10/16 Jason Grant <[email protected]>:
Ollie you are threading a dangerous ground there.
Explained here why you are
wrong: http://www.flexewebs.com/semantix/semantic-uses-of-h1-h2-h6-html-tags/
Good link for this thread Jason. Although I don’t understand why the
company name would be inappropriate semantically to use as the h1 on
the home page.
The home page represents the company. If I Google for a company with
it’s name as a keyword I would expect to find their home page. Using
it on every page of the site is a different matter.
For this to work the 'logo' would be text which would be styled with
CSS to look like the logo in a browser. As an alternative I expect the
alt text of an image would likely suffice (not so sure on this one).
To put on my hat with horns to present a possible issue with my own
suggestion; I would point out that using a different structure between
pages of a site can be confusing for a screenreader user; But then,
home pages often are a different structure to topic-specific sub pages
anyway so I don’t expect anyone would get upset about it.
I’ve been doing this for a few years now so if I’m wrong I’m keen to
be corrected!
…
The defence for using two h1 elements in a page makes some sense to me
from the same perspective that it makes sense to put the company name
in every page title alongside the subject of the page eg: "[title]SEO
and semantics - WSG blog[/title]".
You have to draw the line somewhere though, as too much emphasis is no
emphasis at all.
Interesting discussion - thanks to those at WDS09 who introduced me to
this group!
--
Ollie Boermans
@ollicle
*******************************************************************
List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm
Help: [email protected]
*******************************************************************
*******************************************************************
List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm
Help: [email protected]
*******************************************************************
