Hello and a very warm welcome back. Today we are going to look into How To Use Headings Effectively On Your Website.
Search engines and users can read and understand the text through headings.
They act as signposts and help readers to understand the content of a page or post.
Headings are also used to identify which parts of your content should be essential and how they relate.
I’ll show you how to think about headings and use them to improve your content.
I’ll cover the following headings:
- To improve accessibility, use headings
- Why use headings?
- How to effectively use headings
- To improve SEO, use headings
- How to organize your headings
- Structure your headings
- How to get a green light for your subheading distribution
- What is the Subheading Distribution Check, in Yoast SEO?
- Add headings
- A typical heading structure
- Yoast SEO can help you with headings assessment
- Use your keyphrase in subheadings
- How to include your keyphrase in subheadings
- Headings in WordPress themes
- Make sure to check the headings of your blog
To Improve Accessibility, Use Headings
Accessibility is also important.
This is essential for those who have difficulty reading from a screen.
Headings can be read aloud by screen readers because they are HTML.
Visually impaired persons can decide whether to read or listen to the headings of an article.
Screen readers can also navigate, providing shortcuts for jumping from one heading to another.
Remember that SEO is essential in many cases.
Why Use Headings?
Headings are used to indicate the structure of a text.
They guide readers through an article. Headings should indicate the content of a section or paragraph.
People won’t predict what to expect if they don’t find headings in your content.
Readers love to scan text to understand the content and decide which sections they want to read.
They can do this by using headings.
It is much more difficult for readers to scan text if it doesn’t have headings.
This is even more realistic if you include long text sections after a heading.
It’s a good idea to ensure that the headings of web copy are clear and informative.
People like to tease the audience with headings to click on the next page.
This can be very effective, but it is easy to make mistakes.
Remember that headings should focus on the content.
The primary purpose of headings is to make it easier to understand and read the text.
Keep the following ideas in mind.
First, a paragraph must begin with a mid-sentence, which you will expand on in the remainder of the paragraph.
If you are restructuring your text to include a heading, ensure that the first sentence contains all the relevant information for the paragraph.
Consider how your paragraphs are structured and the relationship between them.
A subheading may be a way to make it easier for you to understand the information.
How to Effectively Use Headings
What is the ideal way to use headings?
I can offer two pieces of advice:
Structure your headings correctly and use your keyphrase.
Yoast SEO can walk you through both cases.
It examines how your headings are distributed in the Readability analysis.
It also checks whether you’ve used your key phrase in the SEO analysis.
Let’s examine the importance of both aspects and see how Yoast SEO can help you write great headings.
To Improve SEO, Use Headings
The way you use headings does not impact your SEO. This is a consensus.
You won’t see any improvement in your SEO performance by making minor changes to the headings.
There are, however, indirect benefits.
Headings make texts more readable and of better quality.
The better text encourages better users and yields better SEO.
Searchers who can’t find the information they need quickly will leave your website and go to another site.
This is why headings and text structure have an impact on SEO.
People bouncing off your site are a sign that search engines have noticed.
Search engines will conclude that your site doesn’t provide the searchers with what they are looking for if your bounce rate is high.
You might see lower ratings.
Headings should always be viewed as a way to help the user.
They are used to structure your content and provide signposts.
Your headings will help Google understand what your article is all about.
How to Organize Your Headings
Your page title is the same as your H1.
First, only one H1 heading per page is allowed.
The page/post title should be the H1 heading.
Your H1 can be thought of as the title of a book.
It could be, for example, the category name on a page.
It should also be the product name on a product page.
You can then use H2 or H3 subheadings as you write your content.
This is how you introduce sections like the “How do you improve the distribution of your heading,” which you are currently reading.
You can think of H2 subheadings as chapters in a book.
These sections may also have more specific headers (H3 tags and then H4 tags) to introduce sub-sections.
It is rare for content to be ‘deep enough to require H4 tags beyond the point of technical or long-form writing.
Structure Your Headings
Note: There are two sets of ‘rules’ regarding HTML heading tags – the ‘classic approach’ (from HTML4 standard) and the modern approach (from HTML5 standard)!
The classic approach is the best since it has some SEO and usability fixes.
You will see different levels of headings when editing articles in WordPress.
These can range from ‘Heading 1’ to ‘Heading 6’. They come in different sizes, ranging from the largest to the smallest.
These are then converted to HTML heading tags behind the scenes;
This is why H1 tags and H2 tags are used to describe how to structure headings, content, and other aspects of structuring headings.
How to Get a Green Light for Your Subheading Distribution
What should you do if Yoast SEO gives you an orange or red bullet for your subheading distribution?
First and most importantly, don’t forget about subheadings.
You should also create
subheadings for each topic in your text.
This could be used for several paragraphs on the same topic.
You should place a heading above each long paragraph, a grouping of paragraphs that form a thematic unit.
A paragraph of length 250-350 words should follow a subheading.
What is the Subheading Distribution Check, in Yoast SEO?
Subheading distribution checks assess whether your text has enough subheadings.
Subheadings are essential for text over 300 words. They help readers scan the text.
This will let you know if your text exceeds 300 words and does not contain subheadings.
This will notify you if the text section that follows a subheading exceeds 300 words.
It will suggest adding subheadings to make the text more readable.
Add Headings
Wait, what about adding headings? There are two ways to add headings in WordPress.
- Via the editor
The editor is the best way to add headings.
You can click on the + button to select ‘Heading’ if you already use Gutenberg’s new block editor.
Next, select the heading you wish to add.
It’s also easy if you still use the classic editor.
You can start by ensuring you are on the visual tab.
Next, select ‘Heading 2’ or another heading from the dropdown menu.
In the classic editor, select a header.
HTML
You can also add headings using HTML in the classic editor.., etc.
You should identify each type of heading. Close each heading with a closing tag.
- Header tags in an HTML Editor
You can swap between the visual editor and HTML in the block editor. Click on the three vertical dots at the block toolbar to do this. Next, click on the Edit as HTML option.
A Typical Heading Structure
Let’s suppose you have a post on YouTube Ads.
You have chosen the focus keyword “YouTube Ads” and created an article that explains why you run YouTube ads.
There is a chance that you will write an extremely long and complicated piece without headings.
Using headings to organize your writing will make it easier to understand and more focused.
Here’s how the structure might look
H1: YouTube ads are helpful
H2: Why YouTube ads are helpful
H3: They can help to promote products
H3: Ads can help you sell more products
H3: They may be cheaper than you think
H2: How can you create YouTube ads?
H3: The top 10 tools for creating YouTube ads
I have created a logical structure using H2 tags to plan sections and H3 tags for specific topics.
The same thing happened in the post that you are reading.
This is an excellent example of how you should structure your headings in a medium-length article.
For a shorter article, you should use fewer headings.
You can use H4 tags to create a section that is even lower-level if you need to get into more detail.
Yoast SEO Can Help You with Heading Assessment
Once you have entered your keyphrase into the Yoast Search Meta box, the keyphrase assessment in subheadings checks to see if you’ve used it enough.
Yoast SEO will give you the green light if the key phrase is used in between 30 and 75% of your subheadings.
Remember that the tool will only review your H2 or H3 subheadings.
Yoast SEO Premium can check synonyms if you have them.
Use Your Key Phrase in Subheadings
Headings are a great way to prominently highlight your focus keyword or its synonyms to make the page’s purpose clear.
Your focus keyphrase is highlighted by including it in your subheadings.
If you want to rank for a key phrase, you will have to write about it.
You’re likely to struggle in ranking if none of your paragraphs deals with the main topic.
It’s important not to overdo key phrases.
You should only use your key phrase where it makes sense.
How to Include Your Key Phrase in Subheadings
The paragraph connected will determine whether or not you add your keyphrase as a subheading.
Each paragraph should give the reader information about the topic.
Your subheadings should briefly summarize what you intend to say in each paragraph.
It should be possible to include your keyphrase in one or more subheadings.
Ask yourself some questions about the structure of your article if you are still having trouble achieving this.
Is my text covering the topic in the keyphrase?
Should I pick another keyphrase?
Are my current subheadings accurate in describing what I discuss?
Which paragraphs are the most closely related to the topic or the keyphrase?
These paragraphs ask questions that are related to the topic and keyphrase.
Most times, answering these questions will help you add the keyphrase of one or more subheadings.
If you cannot answer the questions, you might want to re-evaluate question number 1.
To help you understand how to structure a great piece of writing, if that fails, then read more about copywriting.
The key phrase should be the core of the topic. You should be able to add your keyphrase to several subheadings.
Headings in WordPress Themes
While most themes use headings in their HTML code, some don’t.
Nearly all themes will use an H1 tag to identify the article’s name.
This is an amazing feature because you don’t have to repeat the post name in your content.
Some themes incorrectly use tags – they use tags in an illogical order (e.g., an H4 and then an H2) or tag in sidebars, headers, and footers in a confusing way.
Accessibility can be affected by this because the order of your headings may not make sense.
Search engines, users, and assistive technology typically look at the entire page, not just the content.
You might modify your HTML code to make a custom theme work.
It may be necessary to contact the developers if you use an off-the-shelf theme.
You should make sure your headings are consistent across all templates!
Make Sure to Check the Headings of Your Blog
Your users will appreciate the use of well-written headings.
This increases the probability of people reading your article and improves accessibility.
It can even help with SEO.
These can be added to your copy, but make sure they are used correctly.
Conclusion
The WordPress block editor has a button at the top left that shows you an outline of the page.
This is how your content should look if you have organized it well.
H, tags are of great importance to the overall SEO of your content so insure to use them correctly.
Lisa. Founder and CEO of mistakesbloggersmake.com
