H1 H1 H3 Tags

[web design cape town]

h1 h2 h3 tags importance?

can you use the same keywords in all 3 on the same page or should you rather have variables of the keywords within the tags on the sames page?

Does Google recognize these tags like titles, where each h1 tag should be different from page to page to identify a theme for each or can you have the same h1 tag keywords for all your pages? and then just vary your h2 and h3 for theme page specific.

[Toni Anicic]

"h" tags play a big role in the ranking algorithm so they are important.

You should actually have only one H1 tag on a single URL and this is the topic of this page so it should contain your targeted keyword. You can often see that people put title of their website in h1 (logo) but I think that for the rankings, it's much better to serve unique h1's on every page of your website and have your main targeted keyword in it.

Now about using the same keywords in all 3... Yes, you can (and should) use the same words (keywords) but I wouldn't use the same exact phrases. It makes no sense to have a heading, sub-heading and sub-sub-heading with identical content for both usability and SEO reasons.

You can have several h2 tags on the same page as it's used as sub-heading (a subtitle) so you basically use it to split content of a single page into more readable thematic whole.

There are lots of different opinions on use of h3 tag in SEO community. I've seen lots of opinions that h3 shouldn't be used at all. I personaly don't use it unless it makes sence. This means that I have a huge article that needs to be split into sub-headings and sub-sub-headings.

[web design cape town]

I saw a top seo company ranked on google using the h1 tag throughout the home page. Now this confuses me, surely google will either allow/recognise it or not.

Why, if this is not proper seo will this site be on the 1st page of google for such a competitive word like "seo".

Clealry they are not penalized for using the h1 tag so abusively

[Toni Anicic]

They will not penalize you. It's simply better to use it to describe the topic of the single page user is currently at instead of the name of your website / company. The top SEO company you're reffering to probably has the term SEO in it's name and are talking about SEO on every page in their website so the h1 tag is kind of targeting the main keyword of any single page.

[web design cape town]

no, the h1 tag are repeated a few times on the home page

[ericajoieake]

yes, using H1,H2,H3 and so on are very important to show to search engine robots which of your keyword are the most important.

[safdar_ali]

Header tags normally used to define the products or services and it is more important.

thanks everybody for informative post or reply.

[morestar]

ok sure, the site you saw with high rankings and the same H1 tag on each page might be doing ok but probably for other reasons too...

as others are saying, it is generally better to have h1 tags describe each page individually but if that site is still ranking high and has the same H1 tags throughout each page there must be something else they are doing to help them rank...

see, basically google or other search engines aren't going to say "oh hey, their whole site is good, provides good content and is user friendly but we're going to bring their rankings down because each H1 tag on each page is identical"...

it's not in their best interests....

[danielle v2.1b]

My experience is that Google likes semantically coded HTML. If your H1 tells it the start of your theme and you continue that theme throughout well written code with the HTML tags being chosen because they describe what the content actually means, then the site will generally get a good look in. Using the correct tags for purpose should be a good part of making your content accessible to search engines in a meaningful way.

I have seen people use tags excessively like placing h tags around navigation links. My view is that if these sites enjoy a temporary boost in rankings they are also the first to suffer a fall as search engines get progressively better at interpreting the meaning behind data and the intention by which it was put in a certain way. So yes, use H tags with meaning and it will help, just don't overplay the importance of it in your mind. Semantically written code is something you should do as a web designer anyway, especially if you code in XHTML, so this is hardly a hidden rocket booster type of SEO technique.

[morestar]

I have seen people use tags excessively like placing h tags around navigation links. My view is that if these sites enjoy a temporary boost in rankings they are also the first to suffer a fall as search engines get progressively better at interpreting the meaning behind data and the intention by which it was put in a certain way...

I would like to re-visit what I said though, that being that even if the SEs 'get progressively better at interpreting the meaning behind data and the intention by which it was put in a certain way' it does not necessarily mean they will suffer in rankings to any extent.

if the site is user-friendly, provides relevant content to it's visitors and has decent back-links then their going to get good rankings whether or not the place H1 tags within their navigation code or place the H1 tag in all their paragraphs.

IMO

[danielle v2.1b]

I would like to re-visit what I said though, that being that even if the SEs 'get progressively better at interpreting the meaning behind data and the intention by which it was put in a certain way' it does not necessarily mean they will suffer in rankings to any extent.

If two sites were identical in all ways save one was semantically coded and the other not you would see the difference. There is one. Yet as I say, it's just not a huge one. If you plaster H1s all over the place you simply give google too many keywords to focus on and you dilute your theme. So I disagree with you morestar. There is an extent to which sites will suffer for poor coding. I think on a site where we are trying to talk about best practices it's best not to be too blaze about things despite the fact that I agree other factors are of greater importance overall.

[williamc]

Actually, in a recent study done by a panel at SMX advanced, moderated by none other than Danny Sullivan, H tags are said to be a lot less important than they ever used to be.

The study included 71 well known actively working SEO's for feedback on a number of ranking factors.

Gotta stay up to date people :)

[ogletreeseo]

H1 tags are good to use because they are proper HTML mark up. There should only be one per page. It is not something that should be spammed. Don't spend a ton of time sweating over H tags. Just stick them up and move on. Don't load it up with keywords. Keep them short and descriptive so it is obvious to the search engine the theme of the page. Also don't use the same text in your H1 tag as you do your page title. Don't repeat terms in H tags that is spammy and does not help that much and could some day hurt you.

There are way more important things like getting links and internal link structure to worry about.

[shakir]

H tag distribute in the site normally like main heading h1, sub h2, sub-sub h3 etc... I never add link on h tag... And using same title in all h tag is not wise...

[Clarrie]

I'm with Danielle with this - retaining the semantic structure is good - but its not something to get too hung up on. Unless of course you're thinking of packing the page with stacks of h1 headings stuffed with keywords, 'cos that won't work too well :-)

But you might also want to check out this video from Matt Cutts which covers the topic pretty well: YouTube - More than one H1 on a page: good or bad? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIn5qJKU8VM)

[regmac]

For me, what remains important are the domain name, the filename, the page title and meta description. Maximizing the use of these can surely help you surpass your competition. Tags like < b >, the H tags and the others are mainly used to emphasis topic headlines and words that needs to be emphasized. And by the way, emphasizing words on content means you're increasing the value of that piece of information and in that matter, making it look more important from bots view. So it can still add up to the value of relevancy but not much.

[JBullet]

What does everyone think about making the text in the h1 tag look the same as that in paragraph text? Does it cause a problem? I might need to have the first line, of what is currently a paragraph, placed in an h1 tag.