We’re getting to the home stretch! Hopefully by now (if you’ve implemented some of the techniques we’ve talked about) you’ve seen an increase in the amount of traffic your website is getting. This time we’re going to focus on an often forgotten technique that is considered one of the most important items on this list of SEO tips. Header tags.

What are header tags?

Header tags (<h1>,<h2>,<h3>, etc) are more than just a quick way to format text; they’re a gateway into a higher plane of content organization. You can use them as a way to define your page’s organizational structure and even simplify your code. They also break a large page of content up very nicely (if they are styled correctly). Most importantly effective header tags will increase your site ranking on most search engines.

You can think of header tags as being like the main section headings in a document you would create in school. The major points go in larger text while subheadings appear underneath in smaller text. The sizing of each header tag indicates how it relates to the header tags that have come before it. For example you might see something like this on a website:

How to play guitar

Playing guitar can be fun, but there’s more to it than just memorizing chords. There’s a lot of work to be done if you want to become another Steve Vai or Joe Satriani. You’ve got to be willing to put in a little time. In this article we hope to get you going down the right road to guitar stardom!

Purchasing your first guitar

….

When you look at the block of content above it’s clear that "Purchasing your first guitar" is a subsection of "How to play guitar" because the text size is smaller than the "How to play guitar" header. If it were the same size we would rank that header as being on the same level of hierarchy as the first header. So, header tags help us organize content logically.

How should I use them?

So, which header tags should you use when? Good question. The most important header tag is <h1>; its contents should be close to the same as the contents of your page’s <title> tag. You use the other header tags (h2-h6) for your document’s subheadings under the <h1> tag to indicate different document sections, keeping in mind that the sub headers decline in importance relative to their size (though they’re still useful, so be sure to include keywords there too).

Most importantly the header tags should contain keywords or phrases that are closely related to what the overall document is about. Because search engines place so much emphasis on the contents of these tags it’s important that they be relevant to the content on the page.

Why do search engines place so much emphasis on the content within header tags? Simple, they assume that anything important enough to put in larger text is also relevant to the page’s content.

Don’t forget about that content!

As important as your header tags are, don’t neglect your content! Even search engines that don’t place more weight on keywords in header tags use keyword frequency as part of your page’s overall score. Your keywords (and their synonyms) should be placed liberally throughout your document’s content and inside many different HTML tags. That being said you should also be reasonable; you don’t want your content to sound like an advertisement specifically tailored for search engines. Too much repetition may get your page penalized both by visitors and search engines.

This concludes volume 5 of the Search Engine Optimization series. Check back soon for the 6th and final volume of this series which will discuss other various tips and tricks for improving your search engine ranking. Until then, feel free to post your questions and I’ll see if I can help.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 9th, 2006 at 11:47 am and is filed under Website Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.