Search Engine Optimization Tips

Heading tags

Heading tags in search engine optimization

You see heading tags in HTML code as H1, H2, H3 etc. through to H6. They are used in normal HTML to designate levels of importance for text by creating headings and subheadings. For search engines, they also function in a similar manner. If you want to make Google recognise your page heading as a heading (and therefore important), you should enclose it in an H1 tag.

Customising the look and feel of heading tags

The problem with heading tags is that they do make webpages look somewhat old-fashioned. H1 text is very big! If you know about Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), these can be used to change the size, font-style and colour of the text. There are plenty of simple CSS tutorials on the web that you can look at for this. The text on this page is in H1, H2 and H3, but customised in style using CSS.

HTML:
<H1>Heading 1</H1>

CSS:
H1 {
font-size: 16pt;
margin: 0px;
}

For a more detailed description of how to use CSS to change the look and feel of your HTML pages, click here.