Google Official SEO Guide - 8 Use heading tags appropriately
Content
- Introduction
- Create unique, accurate page titles
- Make use of the “description” meta tag
- Improve the structure of your URLs
- Make your site easier to navigate
- Offer quality content and services
- Write better anchor text
- Use heading tags appropriately
- Optimize your use of images
- Make effective use of robots.txt
- Be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links
- Promote your website in the right ways
- Make use of free webmaster tools
- Take advantage of web analytics services
- Helpful resources for webmasters
8. Use heading tags appropriately
Heading tags (not to be confused with the <head> HTML tag or HTTP headers) are used to present structure on the page to users. There are six sizes of heading tags, beginning with <h1>, the most important, and ending with <h6>, the least important.
On a page containing a news story, we might put the name of our site into an <h1> tag and the topic of the story into an <h2> tag
Since heading tags typically make text contained in them larger than normal text on the page, this is a visual cue to users that this text is important and could help them understand something about the type of content underneath the heading text. Multiple heading sizes used in order create a hierarchical structure for your content, making it easier for users to navigate through your document.
Good practices for heading tags
- Imagine you’re writing an outline - Similar to writing an outline for a large paper, put some thought into what the main points and sub-points of the content on the page will be and decide where to use heading tags appropriately.
Avoid:
- placing text in heading tags that wouldn’t be helpful in defining the structure of the page
- using heading tags where other tags like <em> and <strong> may be more appropriate
- erratically moving from one heading tag size to another
- Use headings sparingly across the page - Use heading tags where it makes sense. Too many heading tags on a page can make it hard for users to scan the content and determine where one topic ends and another begins.
Avoid:
- excessively using heading tags throughout the page
- putting all of the page’s text into a heading tag
- using heading tags only for styling text and not presenting structure
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