H1, h2, h3

Marketing
1

Hi everybody,

In my furious rage after reading a clients email sent over with the usual ‘i showed this to my wife, my kids, my neighbour, the dog, and the cat and they said this is wrong’ etc… i am trying to reply with out being overlly rude.

But before i do could you advise on this particular quote?

I noticed that additional styling was applied to the H3 tag so that it was a certain size and aligned to the left etc. Ideally all these styles should be consistent so the look and feel of the site hangs together and also to benefit the search engines.

Now i wont bore you with all the details, but my question is does the look/style of header tags benifit search engines?

I realise the positioning on the page is benifitial, but is how they look important?

Many thanks

2

<h1>The main heading</h1>
<h2>A subheading</h2>
<p>ra ra ra ra ra</p>
<h2>Another subheading</h2>

A lot of webpage developers use the H1/H2/H3 tags for formatting. Nothing wrong with this but if you talk about SEO, these tags are very important. These tags support the overall theme placed in the title tag.

Imagine for a moment that your webpage is an outline and the topic of your outline is the “title” of your page (the one in your title tag) and the H1 tags are your first level topics under your title. Now H2 tags are sub topics that support whatever is in H1.

To give a example, here’s a sample web page outline with the proper SEO use of the H1/H2 tags.

<html>

<title> Nokia N95</title>

<body>

<h1>Nokia N95 Features</h1>

<p> some intro paragraph here</p>

<h2>Nokia N95 multimedia features</h2>

<p> talk about camera, video, display features</p>

<h2>Physical Features of Nokia N95</h2>

<p> talk about physical dimensions, color, style…etc</p>

<h1>Nokia N95 Accessories</h1>

<p> talk about n95 specific accessories</p>

</body>

</html>

Notice that the overall subject and keyword being targeted is “Nokia N95″ (which is the keyword in the title). H1 tags such as “Nokia N95 features” and “Nokia N95 accessories” all support the main subject. Then, supporting the H1 tags are the H2 tags.

Make sure however that the supporting content which is the meat of the webpage is well written, and contains important information about your topic. Always keep in mind what sort of information people who are searching for “nokia n95″ are expecting to find. If within 30seconds, they can’t find what they’re looking for in your webpage, they would definitely leave your site immediately.:goof:

3

Absolutely not (as long as you’re not trying to deceive the search engines). They don’t care whether your headings are green on a pink background, right adjusted or whatever.

4

Thanks very much guys.

hooperman, thats what i thought so big up yourself :wink:

5

I noticed that additional styling was applied to the H3 tag so that it was a certain size and aligned to the left etc. Ideally all these styles should be consistent so the look and feel of the site hangs together and also to benefit the search engines.

Explain to him that as search engines don’t have eyes, it’s impossible for them to gain any benefit from the visual consistency of information. Search engines use the HTML code to index information, not the stylistic code and as computers cannot understand context (as we don’t live in the future depicted in the movie Terminator where machines are self-aware and able to process human inspired though processes), it’s highly unlikely Google will discriminate in such a manner. Perhaps as he is an “expert” in such matters he shouldn’t waste his enormous brain on such devices and spend his time saving helpless women and kittens in trees… that and make the change himself if he’s unhappy with your professional expertise (which he’s paying for).

PS: He’s right that your design should be consistent looking (for usability), but that has nothing to-do with search engines. :slight_smile:

6

If you are using h1, h2 and h3 correctly within a structured document, it is almost certain that you will want to style them differently, within the same overall design scheme. The variation in styles will enable people to visually parse the hierarchical structure quickly, whereas if h2 and h3 look the same, that context is lost and you might as well have marked them all up as h2 for all the good it will do you. Yes, there needs to be some elements of consistency, some similar themes running through the design elements, but that’s perfectly in tune with left-aligning the lower heading levels and changing some other aspects of the styling.

Search engines won’t give a damn about how you’ve styled the various headings. They can often spot if you are deliberately hiding headings or other elements that are stuffed with keywords (eg when they have the same foreground and background colours), but beyond that, having different levels of heading in a different colour, font, style, alignment, border or background will make absolutely zero difference to any search engine.

7

for sure styling is very very important for good rankings

8

ridiculous

perhaps you could explain why you think this