SEO in 30 days, Day 14: Defining the Topic of Each Page, Part 2

Header Tags

In Part 1 of Defining the Topic of Each Page (Day 13 of SEO in 30 Days) we discussed the importance of having a strong theme on each page of your website. Since search engines look for websites with the most authority on a topic, it is important to help them see this very clearly by having pages that are relevant to that topic. One way to do this is to include targeted keywords in the title tag, body copy, and header tags.
In this post we will be discussing the importance of header tags and how they can improve your search engine visibility.

Header tags are the heading (H1) and subheadings (H2 – H6) of the page, and should provide an outline of the content. Header tags can be used to format the size of text on a website as well, but they predominantly are used to inform search engines of a page’s theme.

An outline of a paper is a great example of how H1 to H6 tags work. The main title of the outline would be an H1 tag, the section title would be H2 tag, and the subtitles of the individual sections would be an H3 tag and beyond. H3, H4, H5, and H6 tags are not as important as an H1 and H2 tag, but they can still help structure your site.

The correct way to use an H1 tag is to summarize the content on a page while including your targeted keyword. While it is possible to use an H1 tag multiple times on a page, this practice will dilute the value passed on from each H1 tag. The best practice is to use one H1 per page, and have this contain the primary keyword phrase for the page, ex. “Santa Barbara Family Law Firm” http://www.glennlrobertsonlaw.com/ for the page about the law firm.

By adding your primary keyword into an H1 tag, and using H2 tags as subject headings, you will help both human and search engine visitors see the main topic of a page.

In Day 15 of the SEO in 30 Days series we’ll talk more about H tags and writing content around them to provide readable, relevant copy for both potential clients and search engines.