Don't bet on the search engines knowing who the originator of the content was.

Aside from the cross-domain canonical tag (in today's WhiteBoard Friday) they don't have a foolproof way to determine.

Often the most powerful site will rank highest for relevant queries... and often the author's site gets into supplemental.

The average Joe Schmoe who has a website is going to type the title of his page into both the <title>and <h1>.</p> <p>I can't imagine any search engine deducting points for it.... and with 199 other factors in the rankings if this WAS in there the deduction for it would be really really low.</p> <p>Still... I think that a person can safely bet a month's pay that matching title and H1 will not make him rank #2 when everything else ranks him #1.</p> <p>Also, I can't imagine search engines placing this "invisible tripwire for SEOs" in their evaluation that is going to be automatically triggered by some of the most commonly used content management systems.</p></title>

Dangerous?

I doubt it.

I have a site full of this and it is hard to beat in my SERPs.

Saves time in my opinion.  Smart, if the title and the H1 make sense.

Lots of content management systems produce this automatically - and match the URL to boot!

Added: (I do have lots of pages where the title tag and the H1 differ.  For those pages the title tag was written to elicit clicks and the H1 was simply the title of the article.)

lol......  I think that you will get your bunns sued of with that one.

I was just being a wise guy.  

Someone should register the domain... BeforeYouHireAnSEO.com and fill it full of warning content for small business owners.... or even companies like JCP who might outsource their work.

If you are considering the use of his services call him up on the phone and start talking with him about a specific SEO problem or two.  If you do that either his pants will fall or your BS meter will redline.

Hey.... what's wrong with body-building for the elderly?

I agree that in the long term a big kickass site will defeat a flock of hotdog stand websites.

I vote for the one big site.

Which will rank better?  One big site with 300 links or three little sites with 100 links each?  My money is on the big site.

Which will be more linkable?  One big site with a cluster of products or three hotdog stands with one product each?

Which will give you the opportunity of cross-selling and larger, more profitable sales?  A big site with multiple products or three tiny sites with one product each?

Which will be more work and expense to run?

I used to have a cluster of little sites and then combined them into one big site... and that big site beat all of the smaller sites and all of their competitors.