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Why Having Two H1 Headings is Wrong

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

I’ve come back to this one several times over the last few years and I have to admit that including two H1 elements on a web page still makes no sense to me. Often you see one for the site or page title and the other for the logo - and a lot of very smart people say that’s fine both technically and in the spotlight of semantics. Here’s why I would consider that to be an unreasonable load of rubbish.

First, I’ll ask the reverse question - if two then why not three? Or four H1 headings? No, that wouldn’t make sense at all. So why do two of them make semantic sense? Really?

OK imagine you have a tree, you’ve inverted it so the trunk is at the top - there is your tree. Looks like a mini Document Object Model (DOM) tree, by the way. Only this is your H1 - H6 header tree. As you progress through that tree you have deepening levels of heading down to level six as appropriate.

Now try drawing that picture again with two H1 headings. Does it make any sense? I strongly doubt it.

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Information and Data Modelling (Second Edition) by David Benyon (Cover)With an eye toward implementing another web interface database solution from the ground up I'm casually revisiting David Benyon's Information and Data Modelling (Second Edition). Its critical to have a solid understanding of conceptual data modelling and knowing how to identify various things like fan traps and three way traps very early in the process. To that end, while its fine to have a basic understanding of third normal form and general ideas about relations (that which relational databases rely on), its also a great idea to spend time exploring the theory and case studies that lead to a higher understanding.

Often people I deal with just snuff their nose and say they can design a database - but often its a very naive approach. Having read this book about four years ago its time for a quick refresher over my holiday period. No, I doubt few will envy me.