title or h1?
Most sites - even personal ones - have some sort of logo or corporate -like title. Once a site is ‘named’, there’s a reasonable desire to ensure that every page references the site’s logo or title. But what is the correct semantic markup to use for this information? Many sites opt to place a logo image and/or text inside the <h1> tag on every page.
But is that correct? Or even desirable?
Shouldn’t the main heading for a page reflect it’s individual content? It could then be argued that the correct place for the site name is within the <title> tag - preferably in conjunction with the title for the specific page. Those who argue for this approach often use the ‘book’ analogy with the &title> being the book’s cover and the <h1> being the chapter headings.
But, for all of this to work with the site name/logo on every page, the logo would have to be within a plain <p> or <div> tag above the <h1>. Whilst there is nothing within the HTML or XHTML specs to preclude this, is it semantically correct? Since when did a book have text above each chapter heading?
Since this has clear SEO implications, I’d be curious to hear what approaches people have used and why.
I generally try to give each page an individual title in h1 and logos, etc go in a header div. As you say, there’s no real reason why you can’t put a header above a heading. In a phase of trying to get as much content as possible to the top of a page, I used to put my header at the bottom of a page and get my h1s as far up as possible. In the end, I found it much easier to just stick to a minimal header and then h1.
I hope that makes sense?