Guide to using HTML tags

Steve Holford, chief marketing officer at Fasthosts Internet Ltd gives us his tips on using HTML and header tags for better SEO.

Using h tags effectively will not only improve your SEO, but also the structure and accessibility of your web content. H tags are used to denote section titles in your content. <h1> tags are normally used for the title of the content and then lower h tags (such as <h2> and <h3>) are used for sub-headers.

01 Use h1 to h6
HTML has six heading elements: <h1> through to <h6>. Use <h1> for your main page heading, then <h2> for subheadings and so on, where necessary.
02 Prioritise your content
Search engines view the <h1> tag as the most important title of the page and then go down to <h2>, <h3> and so on. This means that you should always ensure your <h1> tag contains your most important keywords and that your <h2> tag contains your secondary keywords.
03 Match your h1 tag to your page title
It’s good to have your <h1> tag at the top of your page and to include the same important search content as your title tag. This highlights to search engines what your page is about.
04 Don’t overuse h1 tags
If <h1> tags are so important, why not add lots of them? Don’t risk it: just use one <h1> tag with your most important content and then use as many <h2> and <h3> tags as you need alongside your content.
05 Think about your target users
All good SEO comes from thinking about your users. If you structure your headings to make all of your text easily readable, you will automatically make it easy for search engines to spider it too. It’s important to remember: users first, SEO second.

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