How Does Header Tags Affect the SEO? Enhance Your SEO Through Heading Tags

FREE Online Courses: Elevate Skills, Zero Cost. Enroll Now!

When a user browses a web page, the very first thing that strikes in his mind is the heading of that page. Does the heading show what’s written beneath it, is relevant to the searched query? And after he is satisfied, he decides to click on the page. In order to make the user land on your page, it is very important to optimize your header tag in a way that it suits the query of the user. So, what exactly are Header tags? Header tags are the tags that are used to define the heading of the page. They are used in the HTML document. They are the key to good SEO. You can improve your ranking, attract your audience through the H1, H2…H6. Here, H1 stands for heading 1 and H6 stand for heading 6.

Now, how does header tags affect SEO? We will see it while exploring the blog.

How Does Header Tags Affect the SEO?

Importance of Header Tags in SEO (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6)

These header tags starting from H1 to H6 define the heading, subheading and other important content in your website. Search engine indexes your website as per these tags and when someone searches for any information and if it is relevant to your website’s content, the search engine displays your website as per the tagged info and headings. Below is a specimen for a good understanding about its positioning.

<h1 class=”entry-title” item prop=” headline”>How Tags Affect the SEO</h1>

Here, the main thing to notice is H1 tag is used in the beginning and in the end. In between, a heading text is used (how tags affect the SEO) which has the main keyword that the website’s owner wants the search engine’s crawler to crawl.

Keyword used for heading matters because no matter how good your content is,  if your heading tags are not justifying the content, the search engine will not read it. So, use the content-matching keyword in your heading.

How keywords help you to rank your website

Other heading tags like H2, H3, H4, etc. are also important but not much as compared to the H1 tag. Mostly these tags are used to draw the attention of visitors to a different section of your website or to let them navigate through other pages within the website. They are not an important factor for the website’s ranking in SEO. They are just added to allow some extra navigation to your web page and for a better SEO.

H1 Tag and its importance in SEO

One of the most difficult task for search engines is to understand what is there on your website. When the search engine’s spider crawls on your website, it doesn’t understand the texts and other content present in it. Therefore, heading tags are used in order to make the search engine aware of the content of your page. Crawler tries to finds which texts are related to your heading using HTML codes. In most of the cases, H1 tag and page title are the same. For example: In the below image: ‘Hadoop tutorial for beginners, learn Hadoop from A to Z’ is the H1 tag and also the page title that justifies the content.

Confused between title tags and heading tags?

Heading tags in SEO

How to Optimize H1 Tag for SEO?

Using H1 tag is one thing but optimizing it is another. Let’s understand this by taking an example: Suppose you write a blog on “chicken recipe” and give the heading “best chicken recipe”. Now, if someone searches “chicken recipe” then there is a high chance that your blog will appear on SERP. However, if you give a heading like “best cooking recipe” then it won’t appear on SERP because the heading of your page does not justify the search query by the user which is “chicken recipe”.

So, It is crucial to make your H1 tag compatible with your content because you have to make sure that your visitors find the content that exactly matches with your H1 tag.

There are several other factors to optimize your H1 tag:-

  1. Use some unique keywords for the H1 tag.
  2. Don’t forget to add an H1 tag on every web page of your website.
  3. Use exact, accurate, long-tail and short-tail descriptive keywords to tag H1.
  4. Use your creative mind to make it look more enhancive.

9 ways to optimize your website for SEO

How to Include H1, H2 and H3 Header Tags in Your Content?

Tags range from H1 to H6 but important ones are H1, H2, and H3 because these three have SEO importance, rest are just used to categorize the content. H1 tag has a major role to play because it is used as the title tag. H2 and H3 tags should be used after H1 tag following proper numerical order like:

H1 tags should have relevant keywords related to your content and should always be used as a title tag. Then H2 tag must be used in the place of sub-heading having some relevance with H1 tag and should carry keywords related to H1 tag and its own descriptive content. This goes like a hierarchy followed by H3, H4, H5, and H6 tags.

Make sure that all your tags are relevant to your content and are grammatically correct. Don’t overuse keywords to just improve your ranking because eventually if Google finds it, then even God can’t help you to get the first rank on SERP.

How to Use Heading Tags in SEO

  1. h1 = <h1>how does header tags affect SEO</h1>
  2. h2 = <h2>importance of header tags</h2>
  3. h3 = <h3>h1 tags and its importance in seo</h3>

You can see the given examples for H1, H2, and H3 tags of this blog. The H1 tag is the title of the page and gives an overview of the article to the visitors. Next is H2 tag which carries keywords related to these tags and describes the flow of content. Similarly, H3 tags also contain keywords from the H2 tag and shows the relevance of used keywords.

Outline

In this header tags in SEO tutorial, we saw that it is always advisable to use heading tags until and unless you are adopting any black hat technique to highlight your website. H1 tag is one of the most crucial factors to decide your website’s ranking and visibility on Google. Even a simple but unique H1 tag can make your website look good.

It is, however, advisable to give preference to distinctive and genuine keywords which can enhance your website’s ranking and performance and can help you in making a user-friendly website.

Enjoyed reading the article? Please provide feedback about how you felt about the blog and help us improve.

Recommended reading – Career in SEO

You give me 15 seconds I promise you best tutorials
Please share your happy experience on Google

follow dataflair on YouTube

1 Response

  1. Narendran.J says:

    I am a fresher to digital marketing and your explanation is very simple to understand, thank you.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *