Building and Optimizing a Search Engine Friendly Pages - Part 2 - Header Tags

Oct 21st, 2007 | By seojr | Category: SEO Optimization

This is Part 2 of best SEO techniques when building a Search Engine Friendly web page and/or optimizing it for best Results in Search Engines (SERP) series.

In Part 1 we discussed use and optimization of Meta Tags and today we’ll take a look at proper use and optimization of Header Tags and using keywords and phrases in them.

Header Tags

What are Header tags?

Header tags tells the search engine what “words” are important in the context of your page. Using <h1>,<h2>,<h3>, etc.. tags is the best way to highlight important keywords. With that in mind consider using keywords relevant to the page’s content (theme) in your Header Tags. The best practice is to place your primary keyword in your <h1> tags and your secondary keyword into the <h2> tags.

Best place for your <h1> header tag is on the top left hand or top/middle portion of your page. You can think of an <h1> header tag as a title for whatever content you have on your page and you should have ONLY ONE (1) h1 tag on any page.

The <h2> header tag should be thought of as a sub heading for your webpage. You should place your 2nd most important keyword in the <h2> header tag. The <h2> tag should be placed somewhere towards the top half of your webpage, in any case below <h1> tag.

Here’s an example of good use of Header Tags. We’ll use “Laptop Reviews” as our main keyword and “gaming laptop reviews” as secondary keyword for this example. We’ll also include couple of more keyword phrases that contain word “Laptop Reviews” in second h2 and h3 tag.

<h1> Laptop Reviews</h1>


<p>…(Introduction text about Laptop Reviews here)  We offer latest reviews on newest laptops, bla, bla, bla….</p>


<h2> Gaming Laptop Reviews</h2>
<p>Here  you can put short text about Gaming Laptops and links to other pages that have specific gaming laptop reviews with short description about each page
for example: Check out the new <link>Dell XPS Gaming Laptop Review</link> that everyone is talking about,… </p >
<h2> Business Laptop Reviews</h2>
<p>Here again you can put small text about Business Laptops and links to other pages that have specific business laptop reviews with short description about each page
 </p >
Now you can add more keyword phrases that are related to keyword “Laptop Reviews”
<h3> Laptop Hard Drive Reviews</h3>

<p>text and links,…</p>

and so on.

This works well in WP blog where on your home page you use <h1> tag at the top of the page with your main keyword/topic and site description below the tag. Then If you’re displaying recent posts below that, your post’s Titles are in <h2> or <h3> tags which makes very good structure assuming your posts are on the same topic (related keyword phrases) as your main site. This way you get <h1> Tag with Main Keyword in it and below it <h2> and <h3> tags with secondary keywords or simply related keyword phrases.

Header tags are important part of your planning stages of search engine optimization, so don’t leave them out or your rankings will suffer.

Now let me put information from previous post with this into prospective. I know I used “Free Article Directory” keyword as an example in Meta Tags post but we’ll change that in this post to match our Heading Tags examples we used here.

Here’s how Meta Tags and Header Tags will look like in Well Optimized page for keyword “Laptop Reviews”:

<HEAD>


<title>Laptop Reviews - Latest Laptop Reviews</title>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”laptop, reviews, laptop reviews, latest laptop reviews, gaming laptop reviews, ” /> 
<meta name=”description” content=”Best Laptop Reviews. We Review All New Laptops ranging from Gaming Laptops to Business Laptops ” /> 
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<— Now here you might have like top navigation and logo here —>
<h1> Laptop Reviews</h1>
<p>…(Introduction text about Laptop Reviews here)  We offer latest reviews on newest laptops, bla, bla, bla….</p>


<h2> Gaming Laptop Reviews</h2>
<p>Here  you can put short text about Gaming Laptops and links to other pages that have specific gaming laptop reviews with short description about each page
for example: Check out the new <link>Dell XPS Gaming Laptop Review</link> that everyone is talking about,… </p >
<h2> Business Laptop Reviews</h2>
<p>Here again you can put small text about Business Laptops and links to other pages that have specific business laptop reviews with short description about each page
 </p >
Now you can add more keyword phrases that are related to keyword “Laptop Reviews”
<h3> Laptop Hard Drive Reviews</h3>

<p>text and links,…</p>

Quick References:

Well that’s it for today, just remember again no matter what tags you’re optimizing make sure you use words that are relevant to your content. Stay tuned for Part 3.

As usual you can post your comments, suggestions or questions below.

Enjoy.

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