What I have done when I want something like this is to create a page component that holds the buttons (also search controls and whatever else I want for those zones in the page). Then I can include this component twice in the page layout - once before the content part, once after the content part.
I do not recommend putting these components in the same h:form as the content is using. It's better to define the component in its own form (since it's repeated, that will make 2 instances of that form in addition to the page content form, if any).
Although I can/have defined a separate backing bean for the "control-bar" component so that I can hold control-bar specific actions (and search arguments,
etc.), I also often use "form-free" constructs on the control bars. In other words, my "buttons" are actually just URLs (h:outputLink's) that use CSS to appear like form buttons. The reason for this is that often these controls are things that people use after they've been sitting doing nothing, which means that use of a
JSF actions (commandButton, commandLink) is more likely to result in a ViewExpiredException. Actual HTML links (<a href="...") such as the h:outputLink tag generates never expire.