Lots of people — and pre-built website themes — build a website’s home page first and make your site’s logo a site-wide H1-level heading. On any page that is not your homepage — that’s a poor choice.

A page’s H1 header needs to reflect the main subject matter of the page it’s on.

H1 Logos Are Okay on Your Home Page

For SEO purposes, your home page is actually the only place it is appropriate for your logo to be an H1 header. SEO problems creep up if you don’t plan for handling your logo on other pages.

The reason it’s okay for your logo to be an H1 header on your home page is that your home page is a landing page for your brand.

The Home page is not your brand’s about, contact page, or a blog post about 10 ways to clean toaster ovens. It’s your brand’s page.

Thus, the main topic of your home page is your brand — any page’s H1 header should always reflect the primary topic of the page — so your logo should be the H1 header.

H1 Logos Are NOT for Interior Pages

The main subject matter for an interior page of your website isn’t your brand.

It is whatever that specific page is about. It could be a product page or a team roster page, but the point is that the page is about the product or the team and not the logo.

In these cases, it makes sense to decrease the level of importance placed upon your logo by conditionally changing the HTML markup surrounding it to something else — like a <span> tag.

Semantics Matter for SEO

It may not change the way your site displays, but if your goal is search engine optimization then HTML semantics matter.

Optimization — the O in SEO — implies every little improvement counts.

Making sure your headers are working for you by choosing the right keywords on the right pages will help your web pages rise higher in search results.

Whether you buy into SEO or not — proper semantics are an easy way to help you help yourself towards boosting your websites online discoverability.