DIY SEO Health Check-up – Part Two
If you survived the last article where we delved into the inner sanctum of your website and hacked our way through the jungle of code in search of the ‘lost submenu links’, then grab your machete and boots, because we’re diving back in. And this time we’re searching for the illusive H tag.
What’s an H tag?
The H tag (the H stands for ‘Heading’) is just like any other tag in HTML but has the purpose of delineating headings or titles for text. There are six of them:
<h1>Heading</h1>
<h2>Heading</h2>
<h3>Heading</h3>
<h4>Heading</h4>
<h5>Heading</h5>
<h6>Heading</h6>
The lower the number, the lower the relative importance of the text in that tag, therefore the H1 would be considered to have the most important text on your page, next H2 and so on. H tags are a great way of telling Google what text is most important on your page.
Consider the H1 to be the title for the entire page. It sums up the main concept for the contents of that one page. A page should only have ONE H1 tag.
Consider the H2 to be a sub heading for large sections within the page. For instance if you had a page on your services, you could have an H2 tag for Residential Services and an H2 tag for Commercial Services, and then the H1 would be the general summary of your services (such as Landscaping Services).
You can also consider the H2 to be a sub heading for an H1, which goes into more detail and expands on the text in the H1.
Depending on the amount of text on a page, there could be a few H2’s on one page.
Next we have the H3. It describes small blocks of text (one or more paragraphs). Your page could easily have twelve H3 tags if you had enough text.
As for the H4’s, H5’s and H6’s, they are not in common usage so we will not focus on them.
Next
Every page must have at least one H1 tag for its title, an H2 for a sub title and then several H3 tags to describe the paragraphs in more detail. This is SEO standard practice and not new news.
Does my site have them?
If your site does not have H tags then you are missing out on the SEO boost accompanying their use. Let’s find out if your site has them.
As we did in our last article you will need to go to your website’s home page, and then view source. Once you have done that you need to search in the source code pop up window by pressing CTRL+F on your keyboard. Copy & paste in each of these: (one at a time)
<h1>
<h2>
<h3>
What did you find? No H tags at all? Multiple H1 tags? Or was everything fine and dandy?
Warning
Do not spam or overdo your H tag! Keep it natural and focused.
What’s Next?
In the next article in this series we will search and analyze the often discussed but rarely understood ‘meta tag’.
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