Basic question about Headline tags and meta description

I've been doing SEO for a few years, but maybe I need a primer on basics for 2015. A friend in the biz told me:

H1 tags:
- I say only one per page
- He said "At one time this was the case but with HTML5 the answer to this question has significantly changed in both SEO and technical regards. If the H1 headings are descriptive and support the page it is completely fine to do so"

Meta Descriptions:
- I say stay under 160 characters or your text will be truncated
- he says "The character limit is a guideline to try and stay within... if however it goes over slightly this will have no affect on your rankings"
- I say he's right for rankings, but users might not want to see the elipse on a description displayed in a search, so reword the description to cut those extra few characters

Any thoughts/comments?

About H1: I tend to disagree with your friend and I don't get what has html5 to do with it. I still think it's important to show a hierarchy in your headers. As a user I tend to find them useful and I think that's what counts.

Meta descriptions: You're totally right. Though meta descriptions haven't any effect on rankings, they have on CTR. A truncated text is something to avoid and you definitively want to have your keywords on those descriptions so they are highlighted in a related search.

Thanks for the reply Andres. Can I get anyone else to throw their 2 cents in?

h1 tags can go in multiple "Sections" of a page, however, I prefer to stay away from that and stick to a single h1 per page.
As far as descriptions, they can be as long as you want but they will only display up to around 160 characters in the search results page. They do have an effect on CTR, as previously stated, so you want those to have appeal beyond trying to stuff in keywords. Make the searcher curious enough after reading your description to click on the link. That's my 2 cents anyway.

H1 tags, does not need to be only one, Metas you can have it slightly more, it will be fine.

My answer in Audio: vocaroo(dot)com/i/s03ebV8rzsAD [please change the (dot) with "."]

Transcription:
Hi Patrc Josh here, I think that ?yes?. I must say that I agree with you. From 12 years as SEO, I think you should be sticking to 1 max to 2 H1 per page and when you are using more than two of them that they should be really placed right. So, H1, some content and H2 for subhead some content then maybe another H1 some content and H2 some content, like that and if you overusing I think you downloading the value that they have with the authority, the use of particular keywords you want to rank for. So, yeah many times informational five questions that made some truth in that but in terms of SEO, I think you wanna try using them for highest value. Then when it comes to the mini descriptions on 100% with you, in terms of having working conversion right optimization for some time that Meta description are critical elements of getting click through. So will stay mainly on have as much affect on rankings, if not no effect on rankings anymore, I think for the actual click through, it?s critical that you wanna make sure that they?re not being truncated and you really wanna spend some time to write good copy in your meta descriptions so that it actually getting the click. Other SEO guys that go with the whole thing of not even writing a meta description in there and let Google choose it and I think that?s madness that you?re wasting real valuable advertising space. Imagine for example, if you paying big money for a news type of advertisement, you spend quite bit of time to write the actual copy that?s gonna go on the newspaper. So in this case, it?s really the same thing. You know, you really wanna spend some time to write good copy in your meta description because that?s wanna get you the click.

Is there a difference between H1 and H2 tags?

Yes the H2 is style wise like a sub headline and carries slightly less weight to SEO then the H1 tag.

A H2 is of course though more authoritative then normal content and therefore a good way for you to tell Google what a page is about..

H3 is again similar..

The H tags go all the way to H6; but using them from H1 to H3 is usually more than enough and a lot more than even most average SEO's use and gives you an opportunity to get the jump on the competition. I hope that helps.

Maximum of 2 x H1 per a page..
Maximum of 3 x H2 per page
Maximum of 4 H3 per page.

There is some flexibility in those rules but that has always worked for me..

Thanks, Tropical Entrepreneur