I'm mostly building my site in Dreamweaver, and noticing that instead of using h1/h2 tags, I've got paragraphs with this as a class. Probably this is my fault; I'm comfortable enough with html that I haven't put that much time into learning DW.

Anyway, do the search engines understand what I'm trying to show? ( Example: Google understands rel="no follow" and rel="no-follow" and rel="no/follow" ) The real question is, how much of a priority is fixing this on every page in my site?

You should give top priority to fix it. Upto my knowledge level, SEs won't consider class. It won't bother about font size, color. etc. So you should use H1 or H2 with class. Not <P> with class.

Originally Posted by ForrestCroce

I'm mostly building my site in Dreamweaver, and noticing that instead of using h1/h2 tags, I've got paragraphs with this as a class. Probably this is my fault; I'm comfortable enough with html that I haven't put that much time into learning DW.

Anyway, do the search engines understand what I'm trying to show? ( Example: Google understands rel="no follow" and rel="no-follow" and rel="no/follow" ) The real question is, how much of a priority is fixing this on every page in my site?

Different HTML editors have different ways for displaying codes. Dreamweaver is a very popular HTML editor and I'm sure any search engine will recognize that code as an <H1> tag.

All the best !

Thanks for the advice so far ... another question: will this be recognized?

<h2><a name="Conclusion" id="Conclusion">Conclusion</a></h2>

This lets me use a table of contents at the top of the page with # links to other parks of the same document. Am I better off moving the anchor to the front of ( before ) h2?

The way you've done it is fine.

And an element wih a class of "h1" is not seen by search engines as a <h1>, because they are not the same.

I want to echo what gringo said. If you want a search engine to see something as an <h1> then it needs to be wrapped in <h1> tags. Just because it looks the same doesn't mean it's the same thing.

So those paragraphs with classes applied are not going to be seen as an <h1> or <h2>. You need the tags there if you want them to be.

The way you have the link coded it will be seen as an <h2> since you have the tag there.

Originally Posted by vangogh

The way you have the link coded it will be seen as an <h2> since you have the tag there.

There should only be one h1 tag per page, right? I've been using it like a visible title; on my Photoshop Black and White Conversion page the h1 tag says B/W Conversion in Photoshop, and then each section starts off with an h2 tag. I think this is the way I'm supposed to design, but maybe I'm cheating myself here.

I don't have an anchor inside the h1 tag, because nothing links to the very top of the page ( I just link to the page itself ), but then subsections like sepia, cyanotype, and so on are h2 or h3 tags, with anchors embedded in them, and links in the TOC like #sepia. I'm just curious whether embedding a named anchor inside of the h2 is likely to confuse the search engines ... if I should move the anchors outside the heading?

Even with the SE implications removed, there are three reasons that you'd want to use h1 over p class="h1":

1. Indication of a header. h1 stands for Heading 1, h2 for Heading 2 (aka subhead) and so on. You're using the tag for its intended purpose.
   
   I don't know for sure on this, but I believe screen readers interpret this the same way.
2. p class="h1" takes up more resource than h1. Yes, the difference is slight, but a good coder will take any advantage he/she can get to remove excess code. A little bit here, a little there, and it all adds up.
3. It eliminates unnecessary CSS classes and uses tags instead. This is better simply because you're not going to have to remember which class goes with what. h1 is a header. Period. h2 is a subheader. Period.

As far as using one h1 tag per page, that really depends on your circumstances. I've seen occasions where a site had a multi-column layout and used h1 tags for the column headings, and that's fine.

The h* tags themselves are not unique identifiers and can (and should) be used as often as they make sense to. If it's a heading, use h1; subhead, use h2; and so on and so on.

The beauty of this answer is that, in a backhanded way, I've answered your SEO question as well. By grouping your information in such a manner as to optimize your user experience, you'll simultaneously be performing a level of SEO as well.

Well, see here is the thing. Search engines like information first off, but they are also interested in how that content is displayed via ( Header Text, Bold Text, Anchor Text, Italic Text, Links To Authority Sites) If you cover all those reasonably ( Don't Make Your Page All Filled With Them)

For google, it doesn't matter, but for yahoo and msn, you'd better change it, because yahoo and msn place more weight on page optimization than google.

Originally Posted by hhheng

For google, it doesn't matter

For Google it does matter.

For any search engine, examining the contents of a <h1> is a good way to see what your document is about.