How to structure your web page headings.

Search Engine Optimization

Christopher Wray

When you are building your own website, or simply writing a blog for your own website, it is important that you structure your web page headings properly. A very common mistake of people (like myself) when they first start writing or building out their web page is that they think that headings are primarily a tool to use to make your website look good. They aren’t, but website builders like Squarespace, WordPress and WIX have made it seem that way.

Headings are headings.

That isn’t a very good explanation, but I think it works. Headings are short descriptions that describe what a section of writing is all about, and it is best when writing a website to think of them that way. Headings shouldn’t be used for design purposes like styling a paragraph to have larger text, or bolding an abstract phrase in your text.

The reason why you need to structure your headings with this in mind is because Google, Bing, Duck Duck Go, and all other search engines use headings to learn more about what your web page is all about. If you make an abstract phrase a heading, Google and other search engines will serve your page to searchers who probably won’t match the target readers of your content. Your search rankings will be lower if you choose to structure your headings improperly.

Now, I will show you how to structure headings specifically:

First, you want to have ONE (and only one) Heading 1 on each page.

The Heading 1 or h1 is the most important heading on your page. Make sure to include one! The heading one should match your page title,and be named in a way that readers searching for what you are writing about, will easily understand that your content shows them what they want to find. Use keywords that you want to rank for online, and try to write your H1 in a way that will capture your readers attention, so they want to read what you have to say.

Make sure to only use one h1 as search engines will be confused as to what your page is about if you have more than one. You will end up losing search engine rankings for both h1’s because search engines will split results between both heading one’s. Remember, search engines are robots, not people.

Heading 2’s can be used for describing broad sections.

After you use a Heading 1 for your title and main idea, you will want to structure sections within your content with Heading 2’s (h2’s).You can use more than one h2’s as they should support the main h1 on the page.Use different wording for each h2 as you are not trying to stuff your site with just a bunch of keywords, you are writing to people first, just structuring thepage so robots can understand it as well.

Remember, you’re writing to people, and you want them to enjoy reading your page.

Heading 3’s should be supporting points under Heading 2’s.

Heading 3’s should only be used under a heading 2. Make sure to start a section with a heading 2 then put your h3’s within the same section.

The list goes on from there.

As you can see, headings should be used within their primary heading. If you like to use heading 6’s, then make sure they are nested in a heading 5. Headings make your blog articles and other web pages look structured and they separate your longer articles to make them friendly to the scanning reader, but make sure you’ve structured them so search engines can read them too!

February 4, 2019

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