Too many <h> tags?

[Oakland]

So I was reworking my headers per SEO when I realized the title is automatically a <h1> tag. Suffusion does this by Default.

So per SEO if I were to place an <h> tag anywhere it would be proper to start with an <h2> since Suffusion used the <h1>.
And because the title is already a <h1> tag it would be best NOT to start my post with a <h2> tag, but instead to place my <h2> somewhere after some content around the fold.
Is this correct?

Also while Firebugging around I found multiple other <h3> and <h4> tags from plugins and sidebars and what not.

So I guess my question is can I control plugins and stop them from using a header and more or less make it a style or strong? And do you know if this hurts you?
According to SEO I would think yes.

And last question does Suffusion place any other <h> tags besides the <h1> of the post title? I may have missed something and this is important to SEO.

Sample Page where I have placed an <h2> around the fold instead of starting my post with an <h1>.
http://stickystatic.com/myipaddressdns/ ... id-phones/

[sayontan]

As per SEO rules, your page shouldn't have more than one h1. On single posts / pages Suffusion ascribes the h1 tag to the title of the post / page. On archive views the h1 is ascribed to the title of your blog.

Any content that you write should avoid using h1 unless you explicitly kill the h1 in Suffusion.

It is perfectly acceptable for sidebars to use h3 / h4. With semantic markup (due in 4.2.0 of Suffusion) you shouldn't have to worry about the sidebars diluting your content.

[Oakland]

Thanks!
This helps.

Removing all my manual <h1> tags and placing <h2>'s mid page around the fold instead.
I think I already see a difference in my SERPS.

So it is safe to assume Google Bot does not crawl the sidebar headers tags and hold it against my SEO?
I'm almost thinking of removing most sidebar content because it can be seen as duplicate content since it is on every page. But I could be wrong?