The supplemental thing is interesting though, it’s obviously shifted. My thinking is that it’s easier to get into supplemental but it is not the penalty it once was. Have no hard data, just a theory after reading a ton of current stuff on it.

If you use site:andybeard.eu you see that my whole site is in supplemental

The description being used in every supplemental result (at least until next update), has a spelling error, because that is what was in the footer of each article just before the disclosure. (I have actually just corrected it).

My meta tag description was spelled correctly – the plugin I was using was actually making a real mess of my descriptions so I am going to manually code it.

I have still been gaining up to 50% search traffic, and not just for targeted keywords.

One of the things I like to do when not online is making curries. There are a lot of spices that go into a good curry, just like there are a lot of elements in getting a page to rank.
If I over do the coriander, or do not put enough fennel seeds in the curry, it probably wont matter to the people who eat it. It will still be a good curry.
Just like you can have elements on your page that do not reflect best pratice SEO and yet still have a winning page.

I don’t think I have ever had a perfectly optimised page over the 9 years I have been in the business of getting eyeballs to websites. But I still have had the success.

It’s interesting you use Darren Rowse as an example, I have noted a number of mistakes on that blog and yet it doesn’t seem to have harmed its progress.

As you say, good content, great content even, will always win the day. but a bit of tweaking here and there will help improve things by maybe a few percent, but it’s still worth it.

My own theme isn’t ideal, as the H1 is for the blog title, and I don’t need to rank for a version of my name that isn’t even complete – it is one of the many things on my blog that I need to fix.

There are lots of blogs that use H1 incorrectly, just take a peek at problogger.net sometime – blogs tend to rank despite all the bugs we introduce, and sometimes good content is much more important than SEO

The default theme is h1, h2, h2….etc.

I don’t use a text title, so don’t need a h1. I think it’s probably correct to have more then one h1 on one page if the context is correct and it is not spam. However it’s quite possible it could trigger a spam filter.

I will take suggestions if anyone has a thought on this matter.

p.s. nice fresh new look to the site

It may be the template. I shall investigate.

However, I still hold to the premise that multiple H1 tags on one page can be logical. I have not read any evidence to the contrary. I’ve read a lot of unsubstantiated opinion with nothing to back it up.

Of course I’m always willing to look at new evidence if you have any.