How to correctly use heading tags on your website

When you’re editing a page on your website, you might have noticed different ‘levels’ of headings in the text editor – from ‘Heading 1’ to ‘Heading 6’. These are ordered by size and importance. A ‘Heading 2’ is more important than a ‘Heading 4’.

Headings serve an important function for both your users and your SEO. They can influence your position on the Search Engine Results Page by making your content easier to read providing keyword-rich context about your content for the search engines.

Why are Headings important?

By correctly formatting your headings, it can help users and search engines to read and understand website content much easier.

Roughly 80% of internet users have a tendency to skim through articles as such, headings provide structure and context for the user and make it easier for people to understand what a post or page is about. Headings also define which parts of your content are important, and show how they’re related.

Headings are also important for people who are sight impaired or can’t read easily from screens. Because headings are HTML markup, screen readers can understand them and read out the content aloud making large bodies of text easier to digest.

Using Keywords in your Heading Tags

Using keywords in headings helps Google gather context within your page, that being said you shouldn’t go overboard keyword stuffing every heading; try to keep it on the shorter side, treating it like a mini-title and never to emphasize large blocks of text .

Make sure your Headings have structure

Your H1 tells the user (and Google!) what the content on the page of your website is all about, making site navigation easier, just like the name of a country on a map. The H2s are similar to regions or states, describing the main topics you’ll cover in sections of the web page. Subsequent headings, H3s to H6s, serve as additional sub-headings within each section, just as a state or region may be split up by multiple suburbs.

An Example heading structure

If you’re a plumber for example, “Plumbing Services in Brisbane” is our focus keyword phrase, and you have written a page about your services available.

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Here’s what the structure of that post might look like:

• H1: Brisbane Plumbing Services
  • H2: Residential Plumbing
    • H3: Bathrooms
    • H3: Kitchens
  • H2: Commercial Plumbing
    • H3: Gas
    • H3: Water