H1, H2, H3 tags & significance?

drang3d · 04-04-2007, 04:53 PM

Hi

Can someone explain, the H1, H2 & H3 tags and they're effects in terms of SEO please?

Thanks

DRang3d

ericbramlett · 04-04-2007, 05:04 PM

Header tags are a way to organize your website in order of importance. Think of it as an outline. There are various ways to organize, but here's an example of how I would go about describing a city.

H1 - City Real Estate
P (paragraph tag) - blurb about city real estate
H2 - Schools in City
P - blurb about schools
H3 - Specific School in City
P - text about the school
H4 - Specific Schools Football Team
P - text about football team
H2 - Restaurants in City
H3 - Specific Restaurant
P - text about restaurant
H4 - Specific dish served in restaurant
P - text about dish

You can use CSS files to define how each tag will look, and it will help out immensely with the continuity of your site & site design. Furthermore, if you decide to change the look of your site, you only need to update the CSS file to update each page in your website simultaneously.

In terms of SEO - the spiders read the Tags in order to find out "what your page is about" & what you think is important on your page. Make sure & use the tags naturally - a page full of H1 tags is not going to be very beneficial for you.

drang3d · 04-04-2007, 05:12 PM

Thanks Eric, I'll remember not to spam my pages with H1 tags then!

fastrealestate · 04-05-2007, 12:35 AM

Just don't place too much stock in these smaller ellements of SEO. There are better things you can do in order to get a site to pop in the SERPS. It's only my opinion but I think an over optimised site if there is such a thing can raise a flag.

drang3d · 04-05-2007, 02:16 AM

So setting the font size for these tags has no effect in terms of SEO? I know this is only a small part of SEO but every bit helps.

waynelong · 04-05-2007, 06:33 AM

I think Eric's description was right on target. It not only organizes the site for the search spiders but for your human visitors as well. A well organized site has got to be beneficial.

It may only be a small part of SEO but I think all those small things add up! Kind of like pieces to a puzzle. When the puzzle is complete you will find yourself at the top of the search engines.

Wayne

Ryan Ward · 04-05-2007, 07:58 AM

While I think it can be debated as to the value that search engines place on each tag, if you think about it, it stands to reason that some significance would be placed on the tags as they need to see what you consider important somehow and this is a reasonable method of doing so. I am by no means an SEO expert - it change seems to make common sense. At the end of the day your users will benefit from organizing things properly.

RESteve · 04-05-2007, 08:07 AM

Quote:

It's only my opinion but I think an over optimised site if there is such a thing can raise a flag.

How could you be penalized by following good web design and SEO techniques? That doesn't make sense to me at the moment.

Boston Condo Guy · 04-05-2007, 11:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fastrealestate

It's only my opinion but I think an over optimised site if there is such a thing can raise a flag.

Can you give some examples here? Are you speaking about h1, alt, etc. tags, or are you referring to going overboard on keywords and the such?

ericbramlett · 04-05-2007, 05:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by drang3d

So setting the font size for these tags has no effect in terms of SEO? I know this is only a small part of SEO but every bit helps.

Who knows? If you set your H1 tags to a font size 4 - yes, it could hurt you - because Google penalizes sites that try to trick the algos. However, it will hurt you more if you throw aesthetics to the side & chase every little bit of SEO you can. Have you seen the size of the H1 tags? Do you absolutely LOVE Times New Roman?

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