Do heading tags matter on Google?

[Dan0]

There was a thread a few weeks back on META tags, and I had mentioned that my article archive was doing just fine without them. Well, the thread took a bit of a turn (as they often do), and we were talking about heading tags.

I had H3 tags for my main page headings, and Jill (Advisor) Whalen suggested that I drop the headings and just try bold text. So I gave it a shot, because I too am curious.

I can report that rankings have slipped down across the board. The drop wasn't terribly dramatic, but it was a drop. I can also report that the article titles will be back in a heading tag very soon. :D

Headings still make a difference.

[Advisor]

Dan,

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

How many positions was the drop?

I don't suppose you would try it with a larger font, or the <bigger> tag (is that a real tag?) or something like that.

How did you have the headers when you took out the <h> tags? Did you use bold?

Let us know if they go right back up when you put them back in.

Jill

[robwatts]

Well, all I'd add Dan is that the SERPs are very unstable right now, all sorts of flux going on, so perhaps it may be a little premature to put the H tags back in?

Excellent opportunity for study purposes methinks.

[Webmaster T]

FWIW, I think they'll go backup because <h> tag have a special function in the HTML spec. I believe it was the spec for 3 or four that it mentioned exactly what the <h> tags are for. To add structure and outline the material in block within it. Dan0, I do agree that whether you use 1-3 doesn't influence the ranking.

<added>a link to older article discussing document structure (http://www.tsworldofdesign.com/search_engine/higher_placement.htm) I found the info in the spec after this was wrote while putting together a course for HTML authoring.

Link to 3.2 standards (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32#headings)Note when G was written these would have been the current standards which a programmer would base his use of HTML in the algo.
</added>

[Dan0]

I'm giving it another week or so, because we're not exactly hurting. There's enough content on the site that we usually show up in the top 3 results for the real world searches that drive in the bulk of the targeted traffic. Sliding from 2 to 3 doesn't impact our results a whole lot.

The "slippage" is really only significant on the more generic search terms, and those aren't really such a great source of targeted traffic anyway.

[Dan0]

Jill:

Missed your questions... the text is in bold. The generic terms seem to have dropped anywhere from 5-25 places in the rankings. In contrast, the static pages stayed where they were or moved up, where we had left the headings in.

For the purposes of driving real traffic, of the kind we want, I don't think this makes a big impact, but it does make some impact. As you would expect, because no single factor is going to weigh in that dramatically.

Since I'm still adding content, I can afford to keep this up for a bit. The drop in rankings is only apparent on competitive terms, and the "reverse 80/20 rule" applies to this stuff. If I get 1000 referrals, on average only 40-50 are from competitive terms, the rest are from multi-word searches where we're going to show up in the top few results anyway.

[Advisor]

Hey Dan,

This would make a really good case study article for my newsletter if you can ever get around to documenting it. Hint, hint!

Jill

[Webmaster T]

Jill, for a case study it may also be helpful to change from bold or other method to <h> tags.

Just a thought

[Dan0]

We'll have a "before, after, and back" by the time this is done. I'll write it if you'll run it, Jill. ;-D

[Advisor]

Absolutely! This is something (as you know) that's been driving me crazy because everybody just assumes it to be so.

I'm sure that many people tested the Header tag thing many years ago and it worked, but I've always wondered how much, and also if that was still true.

Newer designs don't lend themselves to using Header tags, and therefore, I would guess that it wouldn't be given as much weight as it was in the old days. Not only that, but sometimes I wonder if SEOs are the only people left on the planet who do still use H tags. If that's the case, then they should be downgraded even further by search engines such as Google that would prefer unoptimized pages over optimized pages (if only they could tell the difference).

So, I look forward to the full results of this study and the article to follow.

:cheers:

Jjill

[Dan0]

I think the headings still matter, and they will continue to be important because they convey structural information about the document. However, I'm not so sure that the size of the heading is as important...

My sales letter was into the top 20 for "search engine marketing" a few months after the book's initial release, and the tag line that contained those words was in an H5 tag, at the default size. It was into the top 30 for "search engine optimization," with the words in an H3 heading at the default size.

[g1smd]

With a new site, I just went for it, with <title> tags, and meta description, as well as copious use of headings, and then title attributes on links, and alt attributes on images. It went straight in at number one, out of tens of thousands, and has stayed there for over 6 weeks.

I think these things do matter a lot.

[foghorn]

This is a very interesting topic to get more research on. Keep up the good work...

[Dan0]

Originally posted by g1smd
With a new site, I just went for it, with <title> tags, and meta description, as well as copious use of headings, and then title attributes on links, and alt attributes on images. It went straight in at number one, out of tens of thousands, and has stayed there for over 6 weeks.

I think these things do matter a lot.
The question is how much they matter. If you removed the link titles and alt text, how much would your rankings drop? None? A little? A lot?

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by Advisor
If that's the case, then they should be downgraded even further by search engines such as Google that would prefer unoptimized pages over optimized pages (if only they could tell the difference).Jill, <h> tags are used in SEO, but they were in the begining a way of denoting document structure, which has a purpose and is very useful in indexing and page usability.

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by g1smd
With a new site, I just went for it, with <title> tags, and meta description, as well as copious use of headings, and then title attributes on linksIMO, titles in links aren't used, possibly indexed but very susceptible to abuse. I was looking at the 4.01 RFC and found this for the headings
A heading element briefly describes the topic of the section it introduces. Heading information may be used by user agents, for example, to construct a table of contents for a document automatically.
Bold is not in the original doc I added it for emphasis.

[ihelpyou]

No more so than image alt attributes though.

[Dan0]

Exactly, Doug, and that's why we don't think those things contribute much to optimization. We don't bother with stuff like link titles and image alt attributes for optimization purposes. We use alt attributes to describe the contents of the image, for those who are not able to see the image.

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by Dan0
The question is how much they matter. If you removed the link titles and alt text, how much would your rankings drop? None? A little? A lot? Depending what was in them it may raise the rank as they may have been hit by a penalty.

[danielp]

Originally posted by Advisor:
Not only that, but sometimes I wonder if SEOs are the only people left on the planet who do still use H tags.

Jill, Just wanted to highlight the importance of H Tags beyond SEO - in particular, accessibility. Many screen readers rely on H Tags to interpret the structure of web pages. Even if web pages have a structure, without proper header tags, screen readers can't find it. So it is important to use H Tags - for your visitors.


To quote the W3C: "A heading element briefly describes the topic of the section it introduces. Heading information may be used by user agents, for example, to construct a table of contents for a document automatically."
If screen readers like H Tags, it might be fair to say that search engines may also consider H Tags of importance - particularly if they are used correctly.

It makes 'logical' sense for H Tags to have a weighting in SEO. I wouldn't be surprised if the correctly structured use of H Tags was a factor in Google's algo. I'm also sure that any mis-use of H Tags will be frowned upon by Google.

It'll be interesing to see the results of Dan's 'experiment'.

Cheers,

Daniel

[Dan0]

Daniel:

You have hit it right on the money there. A lot of the stuff that gets abused for SEO has a reason for being that is far more important than SEO. Headings, ALT text, even HTML comments, all these things were developed for a reason.

What's interesting about this to me, is that if it doesn't really matter what size heading is used, or if bold text is 'almost as good,' that means it's a lot easier to convince folks to do the right thing when they design.

[classa]

I have seen several of my pages jump to the top of Google after having used the <h1> tag, and these are inner pages, not my index page.

Before the use of the <h1> tags on these pages, my other optimization techniques had me ranked for my desired key words at around the 12 to 15 ranking.

Since the inception of the <h1> tags, (which is something I used to overlook on a regular basis), my inner pages have climbed to the #1 and or the #2 positions for my desired keywords.

1 such example of this would be the search term... team driver jobs (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=team+driver+jobs)
and the resulting position for our page is http://www.classadrivers.com/team-companies.php

Bear in mind that the URL has keywords in it, and the title tag and the description have the keywords as well.

We also have user viewable text close to the opening <body> tag.

I have not done a structured DOE, and I don't believe one could be done as Google keeps modifying the uncontrollable variables, but I bet I could do a chi squared analysis and prove statistically that the use of the <h1> tag, in concert with other good practices, does in fact have a positive impact on the ranking of the page.

My questions are this though.....

I read at another forum that the total of the <h1> tags should not exceeded 100 words. I find that a bit excessive in my opinion. I have seen great positioning on Google using <h1> tags for some of my inner pages.

Are SEO's abusing the <h1> tag?

Is Google paying attention to the tags and penalizing for over use?

I have some text that I want to convert to <h1>, but I am a little gunshy after having just come off of a 30 day ban.

Any thoughts on this subject are welcome. I apologize in advance if this has been exhausted somewhere else in these forums.

[Advisor]

Just curious...

Was the addition of the H1 tag the only thing you did when you saw the rankings go up, or had you also done other things like add the keyword phrase into the body copy, etc.?

As to abuse of the H tag, absolutely it can and probably is being abused. If you use it for anything more than an actual heading with a limited number of words, you'd certainly be playing with fire, imo.

Jill

[classa]

Was the addition of the H1 tag the only thing you did when you saw the rankings go up, or had you also done other things like add the keyword phrase into the body copy, etc.?

The keyword phrase was allready in the body copy, and that was what helped gained us a top 20 placement.

The page was constructed as it is initially, and the only other thing that I did was wrap the <h1> tag around the text. The text that was turned into the <h1> tag is the text shown below...

<h1><b><font size="2" color="#FF0000">Team Driver Trucking Jobs - Better Trucking Companies Hiring Teams</font></b></h1>

I don't know if this would work as well with a more competetive term like "website design", but it is a practice that I will continue to employ.

I just want to make sure that I don't abuse it.

PS.... Jill, I am also a subscriber to your newsletter...... :read:
Maybe that helped with the rankings as well..... :D

[Dan0]

It's reasonable to assume that they would look at how much text was in H1 tags, and act accordingly. If you have 500 words on the page, all contained within H1 tags, that's clearly not a heading.

The purpose of H1 tags (all heading tags) is to make the main headings stand out. If you instead try to abuse it solely for SEO purposes, you're absolutely right to expect something. I'd agree that 100 words of H1 text is ridiculously high, and I'd expect it to start working against your rankings long before that.

With any luck, they'll start pulling stylesheets and examining the properties associated with heading tags, etc. Some folks try to trick the search engines with headings that are the same size, color, etc. as plain text.

[foghorn]

I have assumed that if one had an H3 tag instead of an H1 tag, the amount of SEO benefit would be the same. At least so long as there was no H1 or H2 tag on the page. I assume that google merely looks for any H tag on a page no matter what the size, and then gives it the highest amount of benefit.

Stated another way, a page with only one H tag - an H3, gets the same SEO benefit as another page with only one H1 tag. Is this correct?

[Advisor]

PS.... Jill, I am also a subscriber to your newsletter......
Maybe that helped with the rankings as well..... Yes, as a matter of fact, I have a special deal with Google. All subscribers get a 5 point boost in rankings! ;) So sign up today!






(Just kidding, of course for anyone that might actually believe that!)

[classa]

Stated another way, a page with only one H tag - an H3, gets the same SEO benefit as another page with only one H1 tag. Is this correct?

This has been the effect that I have seen. My index.php page only has <h2> tags and seems to benefit from the tags.

[scottiecl]

Originally posted by classa

<h1><b><font size="2" color="#FF0000">Team Driver Trucking Jobs - Better Trucking Companies Hiring Teams</font></b></h1>
I'm just nosy- why would you bold and shrink an H1 tag?

If you don't like the way the H1 looks, you can change it with a stylesheet and apply it to all H1 tags within your site.

If you are just "hiding" the fact that this is a heading, you may want to rethink your strategy...

I have tags from <h1> to <h5> on my pages, used to {gasp} layout the content properly. I get the impression that any <h> tag is taken into account.

[Advisor]

If you don't know CSS, the bold shrink thing is a good alternative. I used to do that all the time before I learned CSS. (Well, actually, I don't know CSS still, but I have others do my site design!)

Jill

[classa]

I'm just nosy- why would you bold and shrink an H1 tag?

Aesthetics...... and the fact that I am lazy.......

Leaving it in its natural form was just plain ugly, and I didn't feel like re-writing my css to accommodate the inner pages.

These things are being addressed on our site re-launch which is coming in approx 3 weeks.

[ihelpyou]

Why use a h1 tag anyhoo? If you think it's better for the engines, then IMO, you are mistaken.

[classa]

ihelpyou,

Please refer to my
previous comments (http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8894&perpage=10&pagenumber=3) on page 3 of this discussion as to why I am using the H1 tags anyhoo.....

Like I said, my observations would contradict your opinion.

[Dan0]

Take a look at this search results page. (http://www.google.com/search?q=search+engine+optimization&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=10&sa=N)

The site you probably see listed at #11 for "search engine optimization" belongs to 'ihelpyou.' If you take a look at it, you'll see the following code:
<h3><font color="#660000" face="Verdana">Search Engine Optimization?</font></h3>

That's an H3 tag. If he's got his site at #11 for that search term, without having to use an H1 tag, maybe he knows what he's talking about.

[Advisor]

I think Doug's post confused Classa, because Doug didn't explain what he meant.

I believe Doug was just saying you could use an H3 instead of an H1, which I believe Classa already agreed with elsewhere in this thread, no?

Jill

[classa]

<h1>, <h2>, <h3>.... they are all heading tags.

My point is, "use them".

I thought his question was, "why have the heading tags at all?"

I stated that by using the tags, (<h1, H2, H3,...>) I saw a significant increase in my page rank.

I have just <H2> tags on my index page, and rank #2 for the search term "trucking companies" out of 289,000 results and rank #2 for "team driver jobs" out of 453,000 which isn't too slouchy either.

The point is, I use the <h?> tags, and I like them.

Jill,

You are correct in saying that I agree with the use and the benefits of the <h?> tags (? = 1, 2, 3, 4, etc....)

[Dan0]

So, I'm just nosy too - why would you shrink an H1 tag, instead of just using a smaller heading?

[Advisor]

The point is, I use the <h?> tags, and I like them.
Right! And Doug agrees, and Dan agrees. I guess even I agree since people have seemed to started showing more proof.

Still waiting for Dan's article!

Jill

[Advisor]

Originally posted by Dan0
So, I'm just nosy too - why would you shrink an H1 tag, instead of just using a smaller heading? Because you might want to use them as they're specified by design standards.

The H1 at the very top heading and the H2 as the second level heading, H3 third level, etc.

This may need shrinkage to fit in with a site's design.

Jill

[classa]

So, I'm just nosy too - why would you shrink an H1 tag, instead of just using a smaller heading?

I am applying the <h1> tag to the most important text on my page and smaller header tags like <h2> and <h3> to section headers, caption text,....

IMO, I feel that by adding the <h1> tag, I am showing that this text is the most important.

The biggest reason of all is this,..... I am still learning. :D

The feedback and questioning from this group helps break paradigms and gives me fresh perspective to the techniques to use on the site.

Like I said before, all things learned will be employed on our new site launch (re-design of existing site).

[Dan0]

Gotcha....

ClassA, you might want to think about doing away with the keyword stuffing on your tags. It's probably not hurting anything, but how could it help?
<font title="trucking companies" color=#003366>

Your style definitions in the heading already put H1 at 12px, bold, and red, BTW. Probably not necessary to do it again with a <font> and <b> tag.

I'm not saying you need to mess with any of this stuff today, but it'll get you tighter code (and faster downloads) when you do your redesign.

[Bernard]

The page views on this thread are out of site... Is there an error?

[classa]

I'm not saying you need to mess with any of this stuff today, but it'll get you tighter code (and faster downloads) when you do your redesign.

Dan0,

You are absolutely right. We are addressing all of these things in our site re-design.

The sample code posted earlier was not on our home page, but on one deeper in the site.

All of this will be controlled in our new admin area where we can make the changes a bit more dynamically and globally.

[Net Wizard]

How about an <h.> tag with hyperlink on it, anybody thought of that? This approach is normally used by news sites. Where headlines are in <h.> tag then hyperlinked to the full story. What do you think is the impact of that in your ranking? :D

[Farhan]

Oh I was just thinking of asking that, Netwizard.

Please anyone? What about putting your keyphrase in the H tag and making it a link?

[WebSavvy]

We did that on one of my sites - made the <H> tag (which contained my main key phrase) a hyperlink. It went up about 18 notches in the SERPs and the following month had a raise in PR from 4 to 5, after having been at a 4 for nearly 2 years. This was followed by only picking up about 6 new backlinks.

[classa]

I have not considered that one yet......

I don't know that adding a link into the header tag will increase the ranking of the page that you have it on.

It might (doubt it) have some small impact on the page that you are linking to, but all of that would be in vain if you did not have basic principles applied to the page you are linking to.

[classa]

I stand corrected.

That is interesting. Was the increase in PR for the page linked to, or for the page that the link was on?

[WebSavvy]

What we did was take the <H> tag on my index page (which already contained my main key phrase) and hyperlinked it to an internal page that explained things in more detail. Both pages (the index page and the internal page were optimized first).

The content on the index page was a lot, and was able to be broken down into three separate pages of content, with <H> tag hyperlinks going to each of them from the main page.

This has helped a lot. My SEO is a genius. What else can I say? :)

<edited to add>
I just saw your question: The raise in PR was given to the index page that contained the hyperlinked <H> tags. :) The internal pages were moved up 1 from PR3 to PR4 while the index page went from PR4 to PR5. :)

[classa]

I will have to give that a try.....

[Advisor]

I would guess that the increase in PR was just a coincidence. It doesn't make sense that it could occur as a direct result of what you did, from my understanding of PageRank and how it's calculated. Since toolbar pagerank goes up and down all the time, it would be impossible to be able to know for sure, but again, it's highly unlikely that a link in a header tag would have any effect on PageRank.

PageRank is *only* about links. Not the type of link, and not even the words in the link.

Jill

[WebSavvy]

Nah, I know that Jill. :) We picked up 6 backlinks from sites that are good ones, and that is what gave the PR boost.

But, the movement in the SERPs upwards 18 notches came only after the hyperlinked <H> tags. The <H> tags also contained the TITLE attrib too. The key phrase that each hyperlinked <H> tag set had, went to a page that specifically detailed more information and lead off on the detailed page with the same term and also was given to the page as it's title.

My SEO is one of the best and he knows his stuff inside and out and I was very lucky to get him. :)

[Net Wizard]

he he he....

See, there are so many little tricks that a lot of people are missing about and that's without resorting to any shady tricks at all.

Yes, <h.> tags and hyperlinks are very powerful combination indeed, especially if your main index page have a high PR. Been uisng this approach for years now :)

I could go on but then we would be going off-topic on this one. Like, how many of you include stop words in your anchor? ;) But, I guess that's a thread by itself :)

Cheers

[WebSavvy]

We made sure not to include stop words in any Anchors, page Title's, or in <H> tag TITLEs. :)

SEO says NO! :D

[Net Wizard]

Are you sure about that? :D

1. We know that Google does not include stop words in their serp but how many of you noticed that the serp result returned with stop word in the query is slightly different from serp result without stop word in the query?

2. How many users have found your site with stop words in their original query? ;) I suggest to check your log for it :)

Just for fun compare the result between "hotel and casino" to "hotel casino" without the quotes.

Cheers

[WebSavvy]

Yep, no stop words in mine. It's a 4 word phrase, and not one of the four words is a stop word ... so there's only one way mine comes up in que. :)

[Advisor]

Using "stop words" is not a problem and can be very helpful.

Jill

[Net Wizard]

In certain situation it is very helpful as just demonstrated by the query - hotel and casino - where Luxor is #1 in the serp but with the query - hotel casino - it's in #7

Whys is this important?

Analyzing my logs, shows, that there is a significant amount of searches with 'stop words' on it. So, if you are ranking say at #12, a stop word might just be enough to bring your ranking to a higher position for searches that have 'stop words' on it.

Cheers

[glengara]

Been away and missed this one....
Changed my index page from <h4> to size3 <strong> about 6 weeks ago, on G dropped a few places for one Kphrase, stayed the same for the other.
The drop was so small though, it could easily be the normal ebb and flow.
Interestingly, results on other SEs have either stayed the same or improved.

[Advisor]

You got it, Net Wizard!

People search with those alleged "stop" words. It's just plain silly and short-sighted not to use them.

Natural language will always be the best way to write your pages. Always. Always has and always will.

Jill