- From: Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:29:22 -0500
On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 11:17 AM, James Cready <jcready at rtcrm.com> wrote: > Jeremy Keith said: >> <article> >> ? <h1 /> >> ? <article> >> ? ? <h1 /> >> ? ? ? ... >> ? ? <article> >> ? ? ? <h1 /> >> ? ? </article> >> ? </article> >> </article> > > Just curious as to how your above examples would affect SEO. Wouldn't Google > lower your rank (even just slightly) because you're using multiple h1 tags? I actually got Ian to ask the search team about this a while back. Their answer was that, currently, there's probably a small negative effect from using multiple <h1>s as the spec recommends, but that it'll likely get revised once the practice becomes common (and thus not indicative of spam), and in any case the effect is small enough that one shouldn't worry about it on an otherwise-good site. Obviously this isn't very specific, but Google relies on obscurity as a major component of its ranking algorithm, so shrug. > Also in this example which header is the most important (for SEO, not just > semantics). Is it the first h3 or the first h1? > <body> > ?<h3 /> > ?<header> > ? ?<h3 /> > ?</header> > ?<article> > ? ?<h2 /> > ? ? ?... > ? ?<article> > ? ? ?<h1 /> > ? ?</article> > ? ?<hgroup> > ? ? ?<h1 /> > ? ? ?<h2 /> > ? ?</hgroup> > ?</article> > ?<footer> > ? ?<h3 /> > ?</footer> > </body> The first <h3> and the two <h3>s in the <header> and <footer> all create top-level sections by the outline algorithm, I believe. If we pretend that the <header> and <footer> had <h4>s instead, then the first <h3> is the most important one on the page. For SEO purposes the <h1> *may* be more important currently, but then again it might not be since it's buried in the page content. I'm pretty sure that some extra weight is given to headers early in the document. Search engine juju in these cases is really hard to determine. ~TJ
Received on Wednesday, 16 September 2009 09:29:22 UTC