h1, h2 and h3 tags

[fattony]

How important in the eyes of a search engine are h1 tags compared to h2 and h3?

The way I was thinking about setting up my page was having:

Welcome to website <h1>
Brief description of services <p>
Heading for a list of our services <h2>
Our Services <h3>

Obviously our services will also be our key words so I was wondering if I should be having the services part in <h1> ?

 

[bluedreamer]

Heading tags are there so you can structure a document, not for SEO.

Example:

<h1>Main page heading</h1>
<p>Something...</p>

    <h2>Subheading</h2>
    <p>Something else</p>

        <h3>Sub subheading</h3>
        <p>More somethings...</p>

        <h3>Sub subheading</h3>
        <p>More somethings...</p>

    <h2>Subheading</h2>
    <p>Something else</p>

 

[fattony]

ok thank, I was under the impression that header tags were used for key words, but I think I've misunderstood the concept, maybe I need to get my keywords into my headings - some how

 

[RedEvo]

ok thank, I was under the impression that header tags were used for key words, but I think I've misunderstood the concept, maybe I need to get my keywords into my headings - some how

You are right for the wrong reasons. If a document is about 'Widgets' you would expect the document headings and sub headings to mention widgets.

d

 

[MASSEY]

Your h1 tag wants to be your most valuable keyword nothing else.

You can also have two h1 tags on one page i see a lot of "seo's" do it.

But the key is to not be spammy dont stuff keywords in everything you can leave have your h3 tag and not even put a keyword in it.

 

[mobyme]

Your h1 tag wants to be your most valuable keyword nothing else.

You can also have two h1 tags on one page i see a lot of "seo's" do it.

But the key is to not be spammy dont stuff keywords in everything you can leave have your h3 tag and not even put a keyword in it.

That makes for poor accessibility. The H1 tag should primarily be used for the title of your page which is descriptive of what the page is about; naturally this title will contain your most valuable keyword because this is what the page is about.

You can use more than one H1 tag to give a separate heading to different content but you have to ask yourself if this shouldn't be on a different page with it's own title.

Your page is going to look pretty crummy if you have used the H1 tag loads of times prettied them up with css and then the css doesn't load.

Bluedreamer has already described the best way to use the heading tags as these are semantically correct.

While G is not going to penalise you for using the odd additional H1 tags there is a certain amount of evidence to suggest that it does penalise overuse on the same page in the same way it penalises keyword stuffing.

It is also possible that G will pick up only one H1 and disregard the rest (remember it's a bot); if that is the case where does that leave you if it picks the wrong one.

 

[SteveCox]

The heading tags are very important to SEO.

From what I understand there should only be 1 <h1> tag on the page however you can have as many <h2> and <h3> tags as you like.

The layout should be something like this....

<h1>Primary Keyword</h1>
<h2>Secondary Keyword</h2>
<h2>Secondary Keyword</h2>
<h3>Secondary Keyword</h3>
etc etc.

 

[cmcp]

Your h1 tag wants to be your most valuable keyword nothing else.

You can also have two h1 tags on one page i see a lot of "seo's" do it.

But the key is to not be spammy dont stuff keywords in everything you can leave have your h3 tag and not even put a keyword in it.

w3 (the international standards org for the internet) says otherwise.

redevo has it correct, as does mobyme. you can incorporate your keywords, but you shouldn't be building to spam you should be building for your users.

only include one h1 on the page.

it shouldn't only be your most valuable keyword, but a succinct explanation of what is included on that page.

 

[MASSEY]

A couple validation errors don't make any difference in a sites rankig, it just upsets geeks not google.

 

[PaulReddy]

Having or not having keywords in h1, h2, h3 tags doesn't really change anything too much. Just have the keywords on the page and you'll be fine.

 

[mobyme]

Having or not having keywords in h1, h2, h3 tags doesn't really change anything too much. Just have the keywords on the page and you'll be fine.

Every test I have ever done would make me disagree with that statement.

 

[PaulReddy]

Well, I've tried swapping keywords in h2 -> strong, h1 -> strong and the other way round multiple times and didn't notice any positive/negative effects when that was the only change on the page.

Do h1/h2/h2 tags have any influence? Maybe, I'm not saying that they don't at all and it doesn't hurt to design websites in a way to include them. But I think you can properly optimise a page without using them and rank fine.