Natural SEO Writing Rule #4: Use Heading Tags for Headings Only!

Always remember this: heading tags are not for making fonts bigger. They are for headings. Don’t use them for paragraphs either!

The idea behind heading tags is to identify a section of content so that users know what to expect if they read all the paragraphs below it. In this light, it makes total sense to use a keyword, because if you are using a keyword, you are not only helping search engines understand your site, you are also helping your users.

So for example, if you sold marketing software, and wanted to do on-site SEO with heading tags, your H1 tag (which should match your page title described above) should not only say this:

“Our product allows you to manage all your marketing material from one dashboard.”

This example hasn’t used the keyword our imaginary marketing software company wants to rank for yet!

It should say something like this:

“With our marketing software, you can run your email marketing, blog content writing and PPC campaigns all from one dashboard.”

Then the paragraphs below it should go into detail about each specific way this product helps businesses. But you may need sub headings to further divide content so it is easy to read. For example, the H2 tag would then be:

“E-mail marketing on an easy-to-use platform”

The keyword here is “e-mail marketing.” The H2 tag could even just be “E-mail marketing” because in this case, it would make a proper heading that both sounds reasonable and helps users scan your content.

Following the H2 tag, there should be a paragraph proceeding, describing what the heading set out to introduce. Don’t follow immediately with an H3 tag!

Do not use heading tags to keyword stuff, and do not over-use heading tags on a page because you think they will help you rank better if all your content is contained in them.  Also, do not use heading tags in all your links – I often see menu items embedded into H1 or H2 tags; this is a no-no! And do not use heading tags to enwrap an image (another strange way of coding I often see).

Check out our example:

“Manage WordPress websites from one dashboard – ManageWP“