H1 tags vs H2 tags

I designed a website that featured multiple H1 tags on every page. My pages only have one type of heading, and I chose to use H1 because I thought search engines would assign more relevance to the contents than H2 tags (the heading tags are marked up with a stylesheet on my site).

However, I read in an article that you should only use one H1 tag per page because it is the highest class of heading. Would my site be penalized for using multiple H1 tags per page?

Also, do you know of any quick ways to replace all instances of "h1" on a site with "h2"? I know you can Find&Replace in Notepad, but is there a simpler way that may not require you opening each page in a text editor?

Thanks for your help,
Daniel

 

As long as you're reasonable about it, I doubt there's any reason you'd be penalized for using more than one <h1> tag per page. Just don't go overboard with it.

 

I think I have already went overboard with it though (four or more per page). Is that bad?

 

H2 I usually use as many as I like.

H1 3-4 max.

 

You won't get penalized as such, but the search engines use the h1 tag to determine what the page is about. More than one h1 could make the engine not now exactly what it's about.

Think of it not from a cosmetic point of view, but from an informational point of view. Ask yourself "What is this page about?" and use that as h1, then use h2 for each subsection, even if they end up looking the same.

EDIT: For an easier way to replace the text, advanced editors like Pspad have a "Search and replace in files" feature that will do just that.

 

Completely agree with rb3m. Your pages shouldn't be about four different top-level <h1> topics.

 

As others have said, headings (H1-H6 elements) are to help define the structure of a Web page.

The H1 element is for the page title (though I often use it for the site title), the H2 element is for the various main sections of the page (usually the main menu and content area, plus a sidebar), and H3-H6 are for sub-headings in the content and sidebar areas.

A properly structured semantic Web page should have no more than one H1 heading in the code, and no fewer than 2 of the H2-H6 headings for the rest of the body copy.

A great way to put this into perspective would be to think of a file tree on a computer. C:/ would be the H1 element, Programs and Files, My Documents, and so on for the H2, and then various program and document folders for the H3s. H4s would be for various folders inside those program/document folders, and so on down the line until you get to H6.