SEO - correct use of headlines

What are headings?

It's important to clarify that in the context of search engine optimisation, a heading is not just a headline that you have given a different styling in the form of a different font, typeface or bolded text. A <heading> is a tag that tells search engines that a given text should be considered a heading.

A heading is not the same as a headline

There are many bad habits when it comes to text formatting, which can be critical for online content that search engines need to interpret.

Imagine you've created a long document in Word and want to create a table of contents. If you've used the right heading formatting, it's relatively easy for the programme to generate a clear table of contents, but if you've simply styled the heading as bold and with a larger font, it's impossible for the system to distinguish heading from body text.

Use headlines to prioritise your content

Using H1, H2, H3 (you can have more than 3 headline formats) is a semantic mark-up that helps search engines prioritise the importance of your content. Search robots first look at headlines - if you have tagged them as headlines - to find out what your content is about, and an H1 headline is more important than H2 etc.

How to tag your headlines correctly

When working in your CMS text editor, you have the option to tag your text. You can probably choose whether the text is paragraph, H1, H2, H3, quote, etc. in a dropdown menu. The text formats differ from each other in their styling and will visually appear very different. This is why many people make the mistake of choosing the tag that fits best into the visual whole.

If you're thinking, "I get it in theory, but in reality it just looks better when I use an H3 for my page title, or a "bold" text for a headline in a subheading - well, you're far from alone.

Incorrect use of headline formats doesn't necessarily affect the user and reading experience, but it does make it much harder for search engines to crawl and understand your content.

Depending on your CMS, you have different options for styling your headline tags, so this should be one of the first things you do before you start producing content.

Use headlines that say everything and nothing

The headline is an important statement. The more engaged your readers are from the first sentence, the more likely they are to continue reading for the benefit of your page ranking.

A good headline should of course say something about the content of the upcoming section, but it should also leave something to the imagination and stimulate our natural curiosity. A good headline also suggests what the reader will get in exchange for their precious time and last but not least, it should contain a keyword or be formulated as a keyword phrase.