H1 Tags – How to Use Them in SEO
This blog entry was posted on January 14, 2010.
Effective organic search engine optimization uses many factors all focused on your keyword phrases. Heading tags are one way of emphasizing your keywords to search engines. Heading tags are used on the headlines on your web page. Heading tags (H1 through to H6) are given much more importance by search engines than regular body text. They should be used to reinforce your page’s overall keyword theme.
Many designers don’t even bother using H1 tags in their designs because they don’t understand their importance.
Keyword Phrase: Use your most important keyword phrase for a page within your H1 tag. H1 tags are given the most importance by Google. You will want to use only one H1 tag on each page. A common mistake made by designers is to waste this valuable SEO tool on non-critical text. Posting dates or “Welcome to Our Site” will not help your search rankings nor does it communicate what you do to an arriving visitor.
Page Title: Use your H1 tag to define your page title. It signals the search engine what topic your web page is about. Choose a keyword phrase that summarizes the content on the page.
Formatting: You can adjust the size and color of the fonts heading tags through CSS. Using CSS, you can still include these important structural tags without sacrificing your page design.
H2,H3 tags: If your page requires multiple headlines, use H2 tags or H3 tags on these. Use keywords in these heading tags as well. Think of heading tags structure as an outline format for your web page with H2 being a section of the page and H3 being a sub-section.
- H1: One per page and descriptive of the entire web page
- H2: multiple topics OK, describe a section
- H3: sub-topic of H2; multiple H3 are OK.
- H2 Topic. This would be another section of the page.
- H3 sub topic.
- H2: multiple topics OK, describe a section
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Thanks for the info about H1, H2, etc tags. I haven’t been using them up until now (today) and I know now, I’ve been doing a disservice to my site. Thanks for the heads up!
Comment by Carla | Green and Chic — January 14, 2010 @ 2:14 pm
Thanks Carla,
Very few designers make use of H1 tags, even fewer use keywords in them.
Doug
Comment by Doug Williams — January 14, 2010 @ 8:40 pm
H1 tags are one the most important issue as far as SEO is concern. Robots while crawling any source page follows the H1 tag carefully. It is the H1 tag that makes the robot to understand on what topic your content is based on. So in broad sense it the identification logo of your content in the site.
Comment by websys — February 18, 2010 @ 5:38 am
Thanks for the article. I was curious if including linked text within heading tags is good or bad idea. Also, is it possible to stuff the H1 tag at the bottom of a site if there is no room for one near the top of a site?
Comment by Chad Walls - Tutor Guy — July 6, 2010 @ 4:52 pm
Including a hyperlink inside an H1 tag doesn’t seem to offer SEO benefit over a hyperlink somewhere else. It also doesn’t cause any harm if it is natural and helps the visitor.
It is better to always keep the header tag at the top of your web page.
Comment by Doug Williams — July 8, 2010 @ 5:17 am