This is an argument which never seems to go away.
Unfortunately the HTML 4 spec http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/global.html#h-7.5.5 confuses things a little by referring to the relative importance of different heading levels, rather than their structural function. Nevertheless, it also says "A heading element briefly describes the topic of the section it introduces. Heading information may be used by user agents, for example, to construct a table of contents for a document automatically" How a logo can be said to describe the section it introduces, or be used in a table of contents, is a mystery to me. Even the argument that the logo is one of the most important piece of information on the page is a bit thin: it's important to the site owner, but is it really the most important element to the reader? Google's advice to webmasters emphasises well-written, well-structured content, written with the user in mind. In my opinion, this includes using headings as headings i.e. text which describes the content it introduces. Although this tip is some years old, I see no reason to believe that the advice is incorrect http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/Use_h1_for_Title Elizabeth Spiegel Web editing cid:[email protected] 0409 986 158 GPO Box 729, Hobart TAS 7001 www.spiegelweb.com.au From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Marilyn Langfeld Sent: Friday, 16 October 2009 7:23 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: More than one H1? (was [WSG] Out of Office AutoReply: WSG Digest) Speaking as both publications, graphic and web designer, the real problem has always been that the title resides in the head, not in a title tag inside the body. H1 is reserved for the title of the page. In a document, at least, there's only one title, while there may be many first level headings. This confusion wouldn't have happened if HTML had a T1 and maybe T2 tag (title and subtitle). So H1 is, IMHO, not the first level header, but the T1, or main title of the page. A logo is never, IMHO again, the title of the page. Of course, all web pages aren't documents, which confuses the issue. But I believe this is the back story, at least it's what makes sense to me. Best regards, Marilyn Langfeld cid:[email protected] www.langfeldesigns.com [email protected] +1.202.390.8847 mobile On Oct 16, 2009, at 4:08 AM, [email protected] wrote: Thanks for your responses... Why use more than one H1? Simple...2 areas of the page that are of equal importance. Why should it only be one? I understand the simplicity of focusing on one area of each page and the impact that could have in search results....but that that doesn't entirely relate to semantic structure. Is it not entirely plausible/acceptable to have 2 equally important area of the page? I feel the logo is very important. It is, in theory, the first thing people notice on a site and the single most important bit of branding. I understand also that a H1 is important to search engines indexing....but I'm yet to see/read/hear of any solid information that suggests Google (in particular) degrade the rank of your site based on the existence of more than one H1. Quoting Yuval Ararat <[email protected]>: > Its not specified any where that a single H1 is the right approach. SEO guys > have found that google search engine tends to read the H1 as the main > subject and decided to punish any page with more then one. the punishment is > not severe so not every one of the major sites obey. > In HTML 5 there is a huge discussion about the header > tag<http://dev.w3.org/html5/markup/header.html#header <http://dev.w3.org/html5/markup/header.html#header>and> >and the > existance of h1 inside of it. my take is that this will not catch > and only google and bing indexing will set the way they want to structure of > pages to be. > > > On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 3:45 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi all, have come across something that I'm sure has come up before... >> >> Have created a new site with the logo wrapped in a H1 tag. >> >> The title of each page is also a H1. >> >> Just got word back from an outsourced SEO expert who says it's probably >> better if there was only one H1 on each page. >> >> Does anyone know of any online resources backing up this theory? >> >> I don't think it's a huge SEO concern at all but the signature on my return >> email doesn't have "SEO expert" on it. >> >> Many thanks. >> >> >> >> Christian Fagan >> Fagan Design >> fagandesign.com.au >> >> ******************************************************************* >> 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] > ******************************************************************* ******************************************************************* 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] ******************************************************************* ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [email protected] *******************************************************************
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