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We get this question asked quite often, and we also see it often when we’re working on websites. The question was asked “can I have more than one h1 tag on a webpage?” You might be thinking that since an H1 tag is weighed more heavily for SEO than some of the other elements on the page, Google might penalize you if you have more than one.

Sometimes a designer or web developer will put the just the logo at the top right inside an h1. Some will put the logo and the headline of some text in h1 tags, giving you multiple on the same page. According to Matt Cutts, Google will not penalize you for multiple h1’s on a page, but he does caution that we should use it sparingly.

What is an h1 tag?
By definition, the “h” tag is used to define HTML headings on a page. The h1 tag is used to define the most important heading on the page (like a title of a blog post, for example) – which is why search engines use this as a signal to determine what the page is about, and can help your SEO quite a bit. According to the most recent study by SEOmoz Search Engine Ranking Factors report from 2011, the h1 has a high correlation between keyword usage in the h1, and rankings – only behind keyword usage in the URL and title tag.