H1 tags, SEO and semantics

Question

I use the H1 tag in my document as the main headline, just like you. The text in H1 is the name of the company that should appear on every page. I use the H2 tag to head the main content on each page. Thus, H1 is the same on every page, and H2 changes.

Example http://dev.darrenhall.info/temp/stackoverflow/h1/h1.gif

I know that many sites use H1 to do what I do with H2, do I lose it without doing this? I know that semantically I cannot make H1 into H2 and vice versa, so I wonder what is the best option. Does it matter that my H1 is always the same? Any advice is appreciated! Thanks!

Darren.

Answer 1

You should use h1 for the page name, not for the company name. Just enter the company name in the div and create it as a title.

For SEO purposes, the company name is not partial to the page. It’s more important to get different page titles so that search engines don’t think that all of your pages are just different versions of the same page.

Using the company name as the title means that you reduce the relevance of the page title, which makes it less likely that search engines index pages by keywords.

An exception is, of course, the main page of the site, where it makes sense to assign the name of the company to the most relevant information.

Answer 2

Mostly a personal choice, since using H1 or H2 for the page title does not affect SEO while you use it. I am going to completely rewrite my site, and I am going to use H1 for the title of the article (and not the name of the site), because I feel that it is more semantically correct.