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Why Heading Tags Are Important On Your Website

Section headings on your website are more than just ornamental pieces. Sure, they can look good and help your readers find the most important section of the article. But that’s not the only reason they exist. They’re also important for helping search engines understand the structure and content of your page.

We thought we’d take a look at the best ways to use these HTML heading tags. They can be a great tool to help your content both look and rank better.

What Heading Tags in HTML Are

You’ve probably come across headings tags when working on your website. Whether you code yourself or use a content management service or page builder, you’ll be setting H1, H2, and H3 headings. They go all the way up to H6!

This code sets the text apart from regular paragraph text. It can be styled separately, preferably using CSS. But it also tells search engines that the text says something special.

In reality, it’s not all that different from the headings and subheadings you see in books, magazines, and news articles. It stands out to help you know what’s coming up next. 

Heading Tags For Cosmetics

Of course, you want your page to look attractive. Headings are incredibly helpful with this. 

You can set their size, font, color, and more. In general, H1 is the largest and H6 the smallest. However, H1 and H2 are the most common. Sometimes H3 tags are used. The headings below that are not used often.

You can style any heading tag any way you want. But that can be confusing. It can create a mismatch between what looks important and what search engines consider important. 

Of course, you always want to keep your headings legible. That means choosing a good font, font weight, and color.

Heading Tags For SEO

Even while you’re trying to make your blog look good, you want search engines to understand what it’s all about, too. 

All the major search engines look for heading tags and “rank” them. H1 headings are the most important, followed by H2, H3, and so on down the list. As we said, H1 and H2 are the most common. Anything below H3 is rare. 

In most cases, you only want to use one H1 tag on a page. This could be the title of a blog entry or the main heading on a page. That means it will capture the overall theme of the content.

We do want to mention here that “title” is a different element in website coding. The title tag contains what shows up as, well, the page’s title in search engines or your browser tab. Often, it is the same as your H1 tag – but it doesn’t have to be.

Subheadings within an article should be H2 tags. These help to provide an intro to what’s in the section. 

If needed, H3 tags can be used for more specific points. These are most often subtopics that are part of what the H2 heading covers.

For a visual example, your tags could look like this:

As you can see, you can have multiple H2 and H3 tags. Technically, you can have various H1 tags, too, but this is discouraged. However, Google has said there’s no problem with it. The reluctance to do it, though, is probably a holdover from when it was believed to be a bad practice.

Writing Headings For Your Page

All the content on your page is important for SEO, but the headings play a special role. So it’s important to think carefully about what they say. 

It’s good to look for a balance between using keywords and making the content sound natural. But headings are an important place to include descriptive keywords.

Remember that the headings don’t stand completely alone, of course. They’re understood in the full context of the page. So it’s not necessary – or useful – to overstuff them with keywords. But they can be great ways to describe what you’re talking about and what you want to rank for.

Let’s say you’re writing to encourage visitors to enjoy a Grand Canyon vacation. Some of the topics you’d like to talk about are the visitor’s center, donkey rides, and other things to do in northern Arizona.

The first step is to do your research. Use your favorite keyword research tool to find out what people search for regarding Grand Canyon trips.

Here is an example of how you could structure your headings:

As you can see, there are a lot of sections you could have in your article. Our rough outline would include nine H2 tags! And some of those have H3 headings, too. Some have definite and clear keywords. 

In other cases, it might sound too awkward, but we’ll depend on the surrounding content to help Google and Bing understand. For instance, they’ll be able to detect that our suggestions for bus travel relate to the Grand Canyon, even though “Grand Canyon” and “Bus” aren’t in the same heading.

Conclusion

It’s important to have headings that make sense and indicate what you’re writing about. They draw the attention of the human eye and the search engine bots alike. So be sure to think about them carefully and take advantage of their potential for improving your rank!

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