Header Tag

Header tag is a phrase that are used to categorize each section of your page content.

Basically, header tags help the reader to understand the structure of the content better.

Imagine, there are 5,000 words of article without header.

Well, here’s how your site visitors gonna be:

Besides improve readability of your blog post, header tags is actually a strong signal for SEO.

Here’s what the Google’s search advocate, John Mueller said:

When it comes to text on a page, a heading is a really strong signal telling us this part of the page is about this topic.

Header Tags Correlation With SEO

Header tag is more than just a styling element in your blog.

Similar as title tag, header tag is helpful for the search engine like Google to understand what is your page about.

Let’s take it into an illustration.

Google spider bots are crawling everything they can find in a website.

This includes text, image, and other elements.

When you put header tags inside your text, these spider bots treat it as a “special text” that need to be prioritized.

In other words, by placing a header tag, you’re signaling the search engine that this text is important.

And from here, the search engine gather the information on what your page is about.

This is why, placing a keyword inside the header is important if you want to rank better on specific search term.

---

Header Tags Hierarchy

The wording you just saw above this sentence is one of the example of a header tag.

It basically look something like this:

Just like the heading in the essay or print content, header tags follow a hierarchy from <h1> to <h6>.

---

Best Practices of Using Header Tags

Now you know that header tags is useful for your readers and search engines.

With that to say, giving a good practice of using header tags will definitely improve your overall SEO.

Hence, let’s jump to the best practice of using header tags:

1. 20% Keyword Header Tags Rule

Having your keyword placed inside the header tags will help to tell search engines what is your page about.

However, it doesn’t mean that you should include the keyword in every single header that you have!

This is similar to keyword stuffing which can makes your page penalized by the search engine.

The best practice is by having 20% ratio of your overall number of headers inside a page.

For example, if your page A consists of 10 headings, place no more than 2 headings that include your targeted keyword.

2. Prioritize Higher Hierarchy Header Tags

When choosing which header to put your keyword, ensure to always prioritize the keyword placement inside the higher hierarchy header tags such as H1 and H2.

This is because, the search engines treated a higher hierarchy header tags as more important.

But still, it should be placed naturally. Do not force the keyword inside the header tags if it doesn’t fit the context.

3. Keep Your Header Tags Short

Header tags is not a place where you should write a long paragraph.

Remember, it is used to describe a section in your page.

If you not sure how long is too long, you can always set your title tag as the benchmark.

Write no longer than your title tag.

4. Write Interesting Heading to Keep Your Readers Stay

When you write common and boring heading, chance are your readers will leave your page and find it not interesting.

If you want to keep your visitors to read until the end of your blog, make sure to write an interesting one!

Here’s some of the best practice to write an interesting headline:

• Make the headline unique
• Use emotional words in your headline
• Provide something useful
• Use interesting adjective in your headline

5. Break a Long Multiple Paragraphs With Heading

Google like to reward a content that is user-friendly and easy to read.

The ideal way to place header tags inside your article is one header every 4 to 5 paragraphs.

When the article is easy to read, the readers will stick around to read it, instead of bouncing back.

Meanwhile, avoid using too much headers with low word count after it.

For example, putting one header tag for one paragraph is not recommended.

Get Strategic With Header Tags

The bonus point, an optimized header tags sometimes help you to win feature snippets in SERP.

With that to say, optimizing header tags is something that you can’t miss in doing on-page SEO.

Stay ahead with header tags!