H1 - site name or page title?

[jimneath]

Hi all,

I have always used h1 tags for the site name and then h2 tags for the page title, thus:

Bob's Chunky Bacon Store

Smoked Bacon

Bacon bacon bacon bacon etc...

My reasoning for this is I believe it is semantically correct. The h1 represents a book's title and the h2 the name of a chapter.

I seem to have read, in a few places, that my h1 should be the page title:

Bob's Chunky Bacon Store

Smoked Bacon

Bacon bacon bacon bacon etc...

From a SEO view, which of these is the better approach?

Thanks in advance for any input.

[ChrisCountey]

I agree with Eric and check out this research: http://cbutterworth.com/do-h1-tags-still-help-seo/

[DarinPirkey]

I personally feel that your

and

strategy isn't that great for SEO

I've seen that Google has shifted much of the importance of

to the <title>tag now and <h2> does nearly nothing from a SEO purpose.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12px; color: #5e5e5e;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">I put nearly no value in H1s and have seen a low </span>correlation<span style="font-size: 12px;"> in rankings for <h1> compared to <title></span></span><span style="font-size: 12px;"> tags</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12px;">I think of it like this.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12px;"><title> tag = what the page is about (high SEO value) (Think of your headline) (Google uses this)</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12px;"><h1> =description of what the page is about (lower SEO value) (kind of like a "meta" tag) (Google may use this but give it very little value as far as SEO goes) (Think of something here to make the person want to continue reading)(I still try to put my keyword at the beginning of it as a best practice)</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12px;">If you can structure your site to have a <title> tag and then <h1> I think you'll start to see your rankings increase.  We use our <h1> tags as more of a description to what the person is about to learn</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12px;">For example:</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12px;"><title>Smoked Bacon | Bob's Chunky Bacon Store</title>

Smoked Bacon. Not just for Breakfast anymore

content content content

[VentaMarketing]

Search engine typically expect the

to be high on the page, above content.

I agree with Eric, the

should be what the page is about and include the search term you are optimizing for that page. The

tag should be similar to the page's title tag and content's focus.

[EricPratum30]

Unless I've been doing things wrongly all these years, your h1s should be what the page is about.

If it's your home page, it's probably about the company, so make the h1 the company name. If it's a page about buying smoked bacon, make the h1 "Buy Smoked Bacon" or some variation of that because the page isn't about Bob's Chunky Bacon Store. It's about buying smoked bacon.