Thu 21 Feb 2008
Header tags are HTML tags that help with the formatting of headlines and section heads in your content. They are also important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because they indicate to the search engines which pieces of text are more important than others on the page. Having your most important keywords in your header tags is an important part of getting better rankings for specific keywords.
However, how many header tags are too many? I’m working with a client that currently using 20+ H1 (the highest level of header tags) on a page because of the dynamic content. This is too many. It is like saying that every word on the page is just as important as every other word and will minimize the impact of the header tags. So, here are a couple of rules of thumb for using header tags in your website:
1) Limit the use of header tags to 5 per page. Any more than this will diminish the impact of
2) Make sure the most important keywords for the page are included in the header
3) Use H tags in a hierarchical manner. The most important headline on the page should be built using an H1 tag, sub-head should use an H2 tag, subsequent headlines should use H3-H5 tags.
4) Use the Strong tag for additional elements on the page that you want to see highlighted, bolded, etc. but may or may not include your keywords.
Hope this helps!