Often I see articles in newspapers and magazines that tell you to “use keywords” and “refine text.” While doing these things is a very good idea, where is the best place to put your keywords? Or a better question might be, where is the best place to put your most important keywords?
Whenever somebody asks me how they can get more “organic”1 search engine traffic, the first things I look at are the Page Title and Heading 1 tags (<title> and <h1>). If they don’t exist, or if they aren’t being used well (”Welcome” isn’t a good main heading), it’s often the easiest way to improve.
The trouble is, sometimes what looks like a Heading 1 really isn’t. It could be a bold tag, or any other HTML tag that’s just styled to look like a heading 1 tag. Or worse, it could be an image masquerading as text. Search engines can’t read text that’s inside an image, or any sort of rich media like Flash. (And if you wrap your image in a Heading 1 tag, that still doesn’t count.)
Page Titles and Heading 1’s Are the Perfect Place for Your Best Keywords
Don’t cheat yourself out of potential traffic (not to mention clarity) by not using these tags to their fullest potential. Note that it’s the Page Title that shows up in search engine result pages (SERPs). Sometimes you hear people say that your website is somebody’s first impression of you/your biz, but often the first thing people see is your page title on a SERP. Make it clear and inviting to click. Got a sale going on? Let ‘em know on the SERP, don’t wait for them to get to your site. Then bring it home with a good Heading 1 tag that assures people they are in the right place.
What I did here is create a simple online tool that will tell you what the Page Title and Heading One tags are on the provided page. The idea is to have something that slogs through the underlying HTML for you to see what’s really going on. I’ve been quite surprised with some of the results. For example, I’ve seen a website that uses a Heading One tag for every link in the menu bar, totaling seventeen of them when you should only use one.
For more detail, here’s relating article I wrote. And for excruciating detail, check out SEOBook.com.
Now let’s get started, and check a page!
1“Organic” refers to search engine traffic that happens naturally, as opposed to being paid for. On a Google SERP, organic results are in the main part of the page, whereas paid placement is located to the right and sometimes at the top of the page.
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