So I’ve been doing this whole web design thing for about a year now and I have a couple of web sites I made on my free time that don’t get a whole lot of traffic. I recently noticed on my websites that I haven’t really taken advantage of the H1 tags. I remember thinking that they were too big, but when I think about it now, that sounds kind of dumb.
How relevant are they?
They are a factor, but only one out of several hundred. Adding useful H1 tags will help, but I doubt whether you will notice the difference in traffic if you leave the rest of your site the same. If you are looking for the magic trick that will double your traffic overnight, it does not exist.
Don’t be put off by appearances … you can change the size of your <h1> text using CSS if the default size looks too big for your design.
If it’s a top-level heading, put it in an <h1>. If it isn’t, don’t.
If Google looks at your pages and thinks that the heading structure looks reasonable, and can believe that you’ve used the heading tags appropriately to mark up various levels of headings, it will pay quite a lot of attention to them.
On the other hand, if Google looks at your pages and can’t figure out the heading structure at all - in other words, if you’ve used heading tags randomly, far too much or to mark up bits of text that clearly aren’t headings, it probably won’t pay any attention to them at all.
Header tags have their purpose in both keeping the site structured and for improving SEO. Granted, you won’t get a huge amount of SEO weight, but if the content contains the same phrase as is in the header, and the phrase matches with other descriptions, backlinks etc, then you’re only adding to the sites visibility. Have you ever used key word tools to assess your pages?
Thanks for the advice guys. I don’t expect much from using H1 tags appropriately, but all of the little stuff helps. I’ll be sure to try and limit myself just one H1 tag per page (if needed).
Also, I’ve never really heard of keyword tools. I have meta keywords on my website but apparently, Google doesn’t like them.
Not being funny dude, but you need to brush up on your seo skills. At 10 bucks, SEO HELP from David Amerland is an absolute bargain. I got it, read it and used it, with mega results. When I started with seo/webdesign last year, I knew little more than nothing at all. Today, my website is on first page for my 10 most important keywords, and half of that in top 3.
SEO Help, the book
You should keep the practice of make up of your web sites twice in a year in terms of contents, graphics and other applications. Although i am not satisfied that H tag are more useful for attracting the traffic or to help you in SEO but to give a healthy and friendly appearance to the visitor.
I agree.
H1 tags are relevant and important from SEO standpoint. You should definitely use them. However, make sure that you add value by adding these on your pages. Do not see them as an opportunity to stuff keywords even if they don’t relate to your pages. Make sure that you use one H1 tag per page. Further help can be found on Google Webmaster forums.
H1 tags are very important. I agree that it is not the only factor, and you need to concentrate on other optimization factors too…
Anyhow, in this era of competition, any opportunity is a blessing. So, make sure that you use it wisely. Only add the most important keywords in your H1 tags, and don’t stuff it with keywords.
Afterall, Headings are also used to introduce your pages, articles or a part of your articles. So, make sure that you used it accordingly, rather than stuffing irrelevant keywords in them.
Header tags is the most important factor of onpage SEO that you can use to obtain good search engine result page. Dont use target keyword in H1 tag but use them in H3 and H2 tag.
H tags are important if you talk about from seo point of view, because display your heading and they tell the crawler that this is your most important heading if you using h1 and you try to put your important phrase/keywords in it at your page, and also one h1 tag for one page.