Using H1 Tags for Effective SEO

While a great deal of SEO focus is applied to off-page efforts (getting those ever-important backlinks), it’s important to remember the “roots” of SEO–on-page optimization.  In that spirit, let’s look at H1 tags and how you can use them to make your pages more attractive to Google and the other search engines.

Tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) are part of HTML coding and they alert the search engine bots that what they’re reading is considered more important than the other content on the page.  The H1 tag sits atop of the tagging hierarchy and judicious use of the element can be an effective SEO tool.  Search engines tend to take notice of the words surrounding by the H1 tag.

SEOManagement provides some insight regarding H1s and search engines:

Search engines interpret header tags as indicators of relevancy. They perceive H1 and H2 tagged text as the most important part of the. That’s why header tags should be used wisely in order to reinforce the overall effectiveness of the content and contribute to higher search engine rankings. Too many H1 tags throughout the regular text body may have a negative impact on search engine rankings. H1 tag should contain the central keyword of the web page. If there are secondary keywords they can be given more weight with the help of a H2 tag.

The H1 tag should only be used once per page.  You’re not going to fool the search engines by wrapping every keyword on a page in the H1 wrapper–that will just dilute its effectiveness.  

Since you’re only using the H1 one time, it’s important to make a smart decision.   You don’t want to waste the H1 tag on something trivial like a date.  Ideally, you’re going to choose to use it for the page’s title text–and that text is going to accurately depict the rest of the page’s content while simultaneously using the keyword for which you’re trying to rank. 

Evaluate your pages in terms of tag use.  If you’re not making the most of your H tags, it might be time to crank up your HTML editor and to get to work!