Can I have an H1 tag below an H2?

[Pete4]

Quick question for you all - Is there an issue with me having an H1 tag physically below an H2 tag on a web page??

[Kara.Wallace]

Hi Rich,

Physically having the H2 above the H1 is fine. Like Schwaab and Chris say, you won't be penalized for it - it is more a matter of logical hierarchy on your page.

I am guessing you are doing this because you don't have access to the CSS or do not want to modify the stylesheet and you like the look/design of a page with the H2 above the H1 - this is fine, just not best practice necessarily.

Typically your page should be structured like:

- most important - headline for the page

- second most important - sub heading for sections, related to

- third most important - headline for sections, related to

etc... implementing

-

tags where correct semantically.

You don't "need" to have an

on every page if it doesn't make sense (for instance if one page was just a continued section or whatever). If you wanted, you could use the

and not include the

.

Hope this helps.

Mike

[Chris_CM]

I don't believe that will be a problem, unless you're manipulating the tags so that the H1 or H2 tags do not contain actual visible headings.  Just out of curiosity what is the context of needing an H2 above an H1?

-Chris Wilson

[Schwaab]

You won't be penalized for it, but why would you need to?  I would think about if what ever is appearing above the H1 really needs to be in an H2 tag.