How to use heading tags for SEO- Google clarifies it in detail
SEO trends are never stable, and as one of the on-site SEO factors, we cannot ignore HTML heading tags. You may have heard a fact that H1 tag is most important to make your website SEO successful. We are going to discuss whether these heading tags affect your ranking in Google’s SERP result. Google has also recently talked about the ways of using your heading tags to get the desired result. Whether you are a web designer or a digital marketer, you need to know the perfect way of adding H1 and other heading tags.
Before talking about the words of Mueller, let us tell you what a heading tag is. After the introduction of webpages, we found the trend of using heading tags or header tags. A capital H represents those tags, and they are adjustable for every webpage. At that time, heading tags used to make the text bolder, more prominent and easily readable. On every page of a site, H1 tag held higher importance, and it was useful for introducing the overall content of a page. The tags used to reflect your page name. The websites applied their H1 tags differently. For some sites, the tags were very long, looking like a sentence. Other sites had limited the size of their tags to few words.
What John Mueller thinks about heading tags?
Recently, in a Webmaster Hangout, John Mueller, an SEO professional of Google, has presented us with a guide on how we need to use our heading tags for an effective SEO campaign. He has also clarified the role, played by heading elements for ranking. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
A few decades ago, H1, H2 and H3, the first three heading tags were significant factors for SEO ranking. There had been nothing complicated in this concept. You had to add keywords to your headings to find higher ranking in the SERP result.
Now, we have found a change to those simple rules. Some of do not think of the headings as a necessity for SEO. However, John Mueller has instructed us on how to adopt the best technique to use heading tags.
While talking about the SEO technique of using keyword-infused heading tags, Mueller has revealed some contradictory views. This SEO analyst thinks that some of us overrate the headings and waste much time to find the best headings for our webpage. Mueller has claimed that Google interprets the headings to know the content of your webpage.
You may have also heard of the belief that H1 has a higher value than H2. Similarly, the importance of H2 is higher than that of H3. Thus, you can raise the question – Should we always maintain the hierarchical values to use the heading tags?
John Mueller has said that there is no need of following this rule heading tags. Indeed, the hierarchical arrangement of HTML heading tags makes your web documents organized. However, it does not play a vital role when it comes to SEO ranking.
Using heading tags – What does Google’s SEO specialist say?
According to Mueller, heading tags play a role to describe an image or clarify the textual content, present on your webpage. Due to the presence of these tags, Google finds it easy to process the image or other contents, adjacent to the headings. Thus, when a Google user makes a search query, the search engine can find out the right webpages.
It is now clear that headings actually do nothing to raise your webpage rank. Rather, they help the search engine in understanding your webpage clearly and easily.
What value will you get in turn? Google will send more visitors, who are searching for the content on your webpage. In other words, you will get valuable traffic or target visitors at your site.
How many H1 heading tags have to be added to one webpage?
You can make this question while discussing on the topic of heading tags. John Mueller has set no limitation to the number of H1 tags that you can apply to one particular page. Evidently, Google does not bother how many H1 tags, used on the webpage. However, some HTML professionals have made a contradictory argument. They have argued that in some cases, it is sensible and important to use multiple H1 tags for a page.
Overall, we can say that everything depends on the website and the target audience of that site. The most important thing is to maintain consistency to the rules, implemented for your site. It will increase the functionality and usability of your website.
Should we match URL with H1 tag?
It is not much important to your website SEO. You may choose an URL that is different from your H1 heading at the webpage. Google would not care for this difference between two elements.
Google algorithms always try to figure out the content mostly from title tags and H1 Heading.
You do not need to make the H1 Heading relevant with URL, as it is important to keep the content updated. H1 Heading and titles are one of the parts of your web content. You have to update them regularly. Conversely, URL can be stable and it is a hassle to change the URL repeatedly.
Summing up what Muller has said
We had already said that in the past years, heading tags retained high importance as one of the top SEO ranking factors. However, if you have a close look at the SERP result, you would not find it to be true. We have to change our concept on the use of HTML heading tags. Mueller has argued that the major reason behind using the tags is to help Google in understanding the theme of your content. He has also added that keywords do not matter much in those headings.
Although you have used keywords for headings, it never ensures that your page would get a higher rank. Still, you can use keywords to make the content comprehensible.
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