What are H Tags <h> and how do these heading tags affect SEO

The H Tag HTML element helps define the sub heading title
importance with the text content of your business website

Why use <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4> HTML elements

We've previously touched on the importance of standards compliance coding and also optimised page content for search engine performance and top natural search rankings.

As part of the content delivery process Heading Tags <h> can be used to define sub heading importance within your website structure. By defining useful sub headings and titles throughout your paragraph text, you can provide visitors quick references to your page content and also further descriptive information to the search engines.

Text content placed in the heading tags is prioritised via the number placed after the H in the tag. The <h1> title tag is regarded as the main sub heading and should strongly reflect your main web page keyword and content subject matter.

“Heading Tags - The correct use of heading tags can provide improved user experience whilst navigating your business website plus it can aid in your SEO by providing supporting evidence of your content relevance to the search engines”

Practicing what we preach with Heading Tags for Search Engine Optimisation - especially the first use of the <h1> tag

As we design and code all our website's in standards compliant HTMl & CSS coding DeGal SEO always attempt to place the <h1> heading tag as the first text content the user or search engine spider/bot comes across after the starting <body> tag within the website's page coding.

As a good working SEO practice this <h1> header tag always provides a description that matches the main keyword and compliments the web pages <title> tag and <meta description> tag.

We attempt to keep the use of the <h1> tag as minimal as possible to really make this content stand out as the absolute most important text within the web page.

Other Heading Tag HTML Elements

Once you have used the <h1> tag properly you can then naturally spread the <h2> tag as needed throughout your web page to help define your content. Again don't just use this tag with the aim of keyword stuffing into title tags for SEO reasons. Keep the use for providing website visitors with useful content and help in navigating through your content!

If needed you can use additional <h> heading tags as <h3>, <h4>, <h5> & <h6> tags are all supported. In practice though if your web page is optimised correctly for just a few keywords you will rarely have the need to use more than the <h1>, <h2> and the <h3> header tags within your coding and content display.

CSS Styling and <h> Heading Tag Display

With the ability to define how heading tags display with the use of css styling it is possible to make sub headings appear more important to the website viewer as opposed to the search engine spider visitor.

To ensure your website is not penalised we would say undertake this styling with great care and ensure any apparent visual altering of <h> tag importance is done to aid user experience in an ethical way.

Without CSS styling <h> heading tags are displayed in default font sizes and styles. The Southampton Search Engine Optimisation Company website is a good example of <h> Heading tags within a website structure. The website uses <h1>, <h2>, <h3> and <p> heading tags to display it's page content.

H Tags <h> are a strong SEO weapon

As with all weapons ensure you use it wisely or it could do you more harm than good! There are a lot of sites that have paid for Search Engine Optimisation Specialists to optimise their site when in reality all they do is keyword stuff the meta data and add <h1> heading tags, with repititive content or non grammatical wording, to the top or bottom - or even both - ends of the web pages main <body> coding.

Without relevance to the page content and ensuring these title tags represent the page subject well the search engines may just consider this a devious attempt to manipulate the search engine result page (SERP) and actually penalise your site - in effect you are paying money to be in a worse state than before the expensive SEO work!

Check your own website's use of Heading Tags <h>

Quickly check your own website's use of <h> H Tags

If you are unsure what <h> H Tags your website is currently using you can quickly and simply check for yourself. By opening up your web page code (there is a guide to viewing a web pages source code on the Keyword analysis page) you can see for yourself if your site is using <h> Heading Tags within your code.

Once you have opened your source in your default text viewer select the save as option and save it to your desktop. Once the file (probably called index.html for a home page source) is saved on your desktop select it to open with whatever web browser you are running.

As the web page is all you have saved the links to images and external design files will not be correct so you will be able to view easily the content of your web page - can't see anything or not much there, well this is exactly what you are giving as content to the search engines to index your site!

Remember that the lower the number after the h the more important you are telling the search engines this sub heading content is with regards your website content.

Heading Tags within DeGal SEO Heading Tags web page coding

The above picture shows the coding from this page and the use of the <h1> and <h2> tags immediately after the opening <body> tag. This gets 2 of our most crucial keyword phrases as the first content to be displayed.

As we are DeGal SEO and this web page is optimised for Heading Tag information we are confident that this page is relevant and of value. The main page body content then also strongly reinforces this.

Trust in a SEO specialist to help create SEO friendly heading tags

Contracting DeGal SEO to undertake your web sites SEO work is your guarantee of the very best possible when it comes to optimising your business web site.

We have a large number of sites we are actively optimising and we stay on top of all information released from the search engines regarding best practices. By all means contact us for examples of our previous SEO work for businesses.

We believe in transparency and happily reveal most of the methods we adhere to when undertaking SEO work within this site. Once you hire us as SEO consultants we will keep you fully informed of all our actions and provide ongoing reports and assistance as required so you can be safe in the knowledge we only utilise white hat methods.

Contact DeGal SEO re Heading Tags

Please use the web form below to contact DeGal SEO with any enquiries related to Heading Tags within your website.