H1, H2, H3, What is the Difference and Why Use Them
Published on August 8, 2018
Published on Wealthy Affiliate — a platform for building real online businesses with modern training and AI.
Header tags at the <H1>, <H2>, <H3>, <H4>, <H5>, <H6> HTML tags found in your WordPress, Visual edit window.
Though I could find no proven “rule” for using the H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 and H6 header tags... for years now, HTML experts have advised us to only ever use EACH header tag ONCE on web page (or post).
As you can well imagine, the H1 tag is THE most important tag.
Your post gains SEO (Search Engine Optimization) benefit from having proper H tags at the beginning of the body of your content, as they are used to help Google’s scripts to understand the structure of the text on your page better.
Most (if not all) WordPress themes have the post and page titles already styled as H1 tags. This way, all users need to concern themselves with are the H2 tag, down to the H6 tag. These should be used to define the hierarchy of your information by showing the order of importance.
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In 2015, Google Switzerland John Mueller claims that Google does give a page a slight boost if a clear heading is seen on a web page. And he continues explaining that this is because Google can understand “this page is clearly about this topic”.
When asked, how many H1 tags should be used on a web page Mueller replied, “as many as you want.”
For me, I shall limit the use of the H tags to using each one only once per web page, as Google is notorious for changing the rules all too often.
EXAMPLE: Back when HTML only was the only method for creating web pages, many webmasters used one web page when providing their information. This too may have been the expense of a website back then. Anyway, users were forced to scroll and scroll and scroll for their information. I honestly do not remember anyone complaining.
However, when Google came on the scene and dominated search engines, they penalized all websites who forced their users to scroll by ranking them lower and lower. The rule then became the shorter the content was, the higher a website got ranked.
TODAY: Short content may not rank anywhere nearly as well as long content. Being all inclusive and all on one page is now the best way for a better Google ranking.
MORAL: It is always best to write for your audience, keeping SEO rules in mind... but NOT focusing your website content to only please Google.
PS: https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/triblu/blog/why-do-click-on-...
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