How Important Are Header Tags for SEO?
Categorized in: SEO
SEO is one of those offshoots of digital marketing that contains a lot of little details that add up to helping the big picture. By themselves, they may or may not make a huge impact. However, as part of a whole, they can mean the difference between good results and excellent results. Header tags are one of those details that doesn’t seem like it would matter, but it can make an impact. Here are some thoughts about this that should help you navigate this.
Good Content Will Always Win
First of all, the core of a solid SEO strategy is to make sure the content serves the audience. This is a core, foundational pursuit not just for SEO, but for digital marketing as a whole. For this, you need to understand what your audience wants and then give it to them. Since the notion of good content is so subject, defaulting to pleasing your audience and giving them great information is certainly a good start.
But beyond that, it is important that the very way an article is composed can make or break whether or not an article is considered “good” or not. If the information is decent but the structure is disjointed, the audience won’t be happy. If everything about the article resonates with the audience, such as the content, the structured and more, this will benefit in the long run.
Header Tags Are Part of Good Content
In the above section, we discussed that the structure of a piece of content is a big part of helping the audience understand whether the content is “good” or not. When it comes to header tags, you should have this mindset. In an idea world, the article structure will flow together in making the content feel like it’s a good, cohesive read. Here’s a summary:
- Title. Select a title for your content, whether it’s an article or a video or page of website copy, that is descriptive of the content. In this article, the title is “How Important Are Header Tags for SEO?” In the way most website are structured, titles are typically H1 tags.
- Subheadings. Readers expect that each subheading will relate and tie back to the title. Most subheadings are either H2 or H3 tags. In this article, the subheadings are H3 tags, and the expectation here is that every subheading will offer one thought as to whether or not header tags are good for SEO.
- Additional Subheadings. Some writers feel as if their content needs more than one layer of “subheadings”. This is a stylistic choice, and these are usually represented as H3 or H4 tags, depending on whether or not the content needs it.
Are Header Tags Important for SEO?
The answer is yes, header tags could be good for SEO, but only if they align with the content, and only if their usage enhances the content itself. They should enhance and describe the content. Think of each subheading (H-Tag) as describing the content itself. They also make the content easier to read, which could increase “time on site” which is understood to be a ranking factor for the search engines.
The goal is to use them, but to also make sure that they are used correctly and tastefully. Also as a side note, the days of thinking you need to put keywords intentionally in the header tags are long in the past. Write naturally, and your SEO will come together perfectly (and without penalties).
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