What Are The Header Tags Content Atributes

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What Are The Header Tags Content Atributes

 

Another attribute that should be included in web-site design is the header tag. Header tags are the attributes that set up the different levels of headings and subheadings on your web site. There can be as many as six different levels of headings, though most web sites use only about four.

 

The debate about the value of header tags in SEO is a long-standing one. Some feel that header tags have zero value for impressing search engines about the importance of text on a page, whereas others feel that header tags are absolute necessities if you plan to put emphasis on certain keywords in the headings and subheadings of your web site.

 

The truth probably falls somewhere in between the two points of view. Looking at header tags from a strictly design point of view, you should absolutely include them in your site. Headers tell users what the topic of a page is and what the segments of body text are about. They also give readers an idea of what they should be taking away from the content they’re reading. For example, if you have a web site that contains an article outlining all the medical reasons readers should purchase a new mattress, your level-one header would likely be the title of the article. The level-two headers indicate the main subheadings within the article, and the level-three headers indicate the sub-subheadings. It might look something like this:

 

Losing Sleep Over Poor Sleep Habits?

 

Your Mattress Could Keep You Awake

 

Too Firm?

Too Soft?

 

Choosing the Right Mattress

 

That heading hierarchy reads like this:

 

H1: (Page Topic) Losing Sleep Over Poor Sleep Habits?

 

H2: (Main Topic) Your Mattress Could Keep You Awake

 

H3: (Sub Topic) Too Firm?

 

H3: (Sub Topic) Too Soft?

 

H2: (Main Topic) Choosing the Right Mattress.

 

Headings on a web page behave the same way that headings on a page behave. They denote important information, and best of all, on a web page, they give you an opportunity to use your most important keywords in a contextually appropriate manner. Most specifically, search engine crawlers take into consideration the text within a header tag and how it fits with the body text around it (which is dis- cussed in the next section). Again, looking at the different levels of headings, first-level headings then should contain the most important keywords on your web page, assuming they can be used naturally within the heading.

 

 

It’s important to make that distinction-keywords should work in your headings. If they don’t, avoid using them. It’s okay to include headings that contain no keywords at all. What’s most impor- tant is that the headers help readers to easily read the content in which the headings are included.

 

 

So if you’re using your most important keywords in level-one headings, lower-level headings (levels two through six) should contain decreasingly important keywords.

 

 

Don’t fall for the assumption that because level-one headings contain your most important keywords, you should use them all over your web pages. It doesn’t work that way. Most SEOS and web-design experts will tell you that you shouldn’t use a level-one heading on your web page more than one time. Using it more could cause a search crawler to decide that you’re spamming the search engine, which will result in lowered rankings and might even cause your web site to be delisted from search results entirely.

 

 

The heading tags are similar in format to other tags that you’ve examined to this point:

 

<H1>Header 1</H1>

<H2>Header 2</H2>

<H3>Header 3</H3>

<H4>Header 4</H4>

<H5>Header 5</H5> a

<H6>Header 6</H6>

 

Header tags should be included immediately before the body-text tags of your site, and the text of the header goes in between the opening and closing tags. These are automatically sized headings, though you can change the size of the headings using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Cascading Style Sheets are a language that allows you to create your web site using a specific style. For example, in some programs you can create a web site using a preset theme. This theme usually contains all of

the CSS information needed to ensure that the design of the site – from text to layout-is consis- tent across all pages of the site.

 

 

If you’re manually coding your web site (writing the HTML yourself, instead of using predesigned sites from some application like Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe Dreamweaver), you would use CSS to ensure that your site is consistent from page to page. The nice aspect of CSS is that you can change your header sizes to suit your needs.

 

 

Unfortunately, some less-than-honest SEOS have determined that CSS can be used to artificially implant header tags into a web site in a way that doesn’t actually change the size of the text included in the header tag. However, using this method to “fool” search crawlers into seeing more headings than are actually on a page could backfire, leaving you much lower in the rankings than you would prefer to be.

 

 

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