SEO regarding using separate <h1> tags for the logo and website name

Question

Is is true <h1> tag should not have more than 1 on every page for SEO?

Every pages on the header, it includes and <h1> tag. Website Name which show an image from logo class, like this:

<div id="header">
  <h1 class="logo">
     <a href="#">Website Name</a>
  </h1>
</div>

and I also include <h1> on the contact page, help, etc and article page for example:

<h1>Contact Us</h1>
<h1>Name of the Article Title here</h1>

On the homepage, it just has one <h1> for the logo Site Name... other pages have 2 <h1> tags

Solution 1

It is very common saying, that <h1> should be on page just once. Matt Cutts (Google engineer) is explaining it right here: YouTube - More than one H1 on a page: good or bad?

So if it is logical for your page to have more just use them - no real penalty for this. Unless you have tens of <h1>s on page and nothing else. That could be little suspicious ;-)

Solution 2

Yes, you will get most out of SEO if you have a single h1 tag on each page.

Having a h1 tag that corresponds with the title of the page will increase the weight of the title somewhat. How important this is depends on the search engine, i.e. some secret formula that they use to determine what's important on the page.

Not having a h1 tag or having multiple h1 tags isn't a big deal, your pages will still be indexed pretty well, but if you really want to squeeze the last out of SEO you should use a single h1 tag.

Solution 3

Note that HTML5 makes these titles relative to the current section, so they regain their true semantic meaning, and make them relative to their context (you can have a h1 tag in a side block, for example).

Now, you might not use HTML5, and I don't know if search engines take it in account yet. If it is important for you, it might be more prudent to play it safe and use only h2 as main title, keeping the h1 to repeat the title tag (well, that's what I usually do).

Comments

[markof]

Used to do exactly that :) Now, the logo and name has its own style and each page gets an individual title.

[Johan]

No doubt you can put more than one <h1> in your code. But the question is about the SEO aspect. And as far as I know, it's not recommended to have too much <h1> tags. When there is single <h1>, it's content will be rated higher.

[John Conde]

Why do you "think" that? Do you have any sort of evidence for this?

[user465641]

@John Conde - I think this coz I think, google has been more complex than what it look.

[Cercerilla]

kind of true... imagine a magazine page with several articles on it. each one would have it's own "h" structure. all the info on the page is not necessarily related or intended to be scoped together

[Tyler Liu]

As the asker shows, one h1 is for the site name and the other is for the page title, so they are not doing too much. It is very common to have both a site name and a page title for a web page.

[user3052604]

@itpian.com excellent explanation. With such deduction you can come up with any argument you want.

[John Bachir]

do you have any references for these assertions? if it's from your own experience, I believe you :) Just wondering if you know of any other sources.

[Guffa]

@JohnBachir: That's from reading different sources and applying that (and plenty of other things) to get really good SEO results, so it's mostly own experience.