I gotta say I am getting weary of the addiction to ‘H’ tags… All prominence factors will help (to varying degrees depending on the engine). This is not about splattering some ‘H1’ and ‘H2’ tags… it’s not about building fishing Pyramids with them… In fact it is NOT about simply H tags Prominence factors are ones used in highlighting and formatting the information (text). These also include Bold, Italics and bullets… Start to think of it as if the SEs like to see a well laid out page, as one would see in a Print publication. Start to think more like a graphic designer and less like and SEO wordsmith. To get the most on-page benefit from Prominence factoring, try and create a nice page layout and use the whole selection of prominence tools at your disposal.. NOT simply H1 and H2 tags.. that is selling it short Sorry about that folks … I have just seen too many H1 references lately.. just had to rant!
That it is my fellow SEO ranter.... BTW - I have been at it 7 days/week fer a while and took 1/2 day off today.. just getting going..I shall email ya the LSI/Phrase stuff once I make my rounds :0)
You are right of course. Still I come across enough sites that are still using font-tags, or using css-classes and ID's to format text. For such sites the idea that one might actually use headings (h1, h2 etc.) is novel - and if implemented will help them in SEO.
While limited in their effects, prominence stuff can help (especially with YaH ) - I just felt folks were selling themselves short only thinking in terms of H tags... you RARELY see other Prominence factors mentioned...
Whether H1 will help your SEO for google I'm not sure, but H tags will lead to problems of showing your pages different in different browsers, while css format not.
Totally off topic, but the best way to use CSS is in combination with (appropriate) H1 etc. tags. So instead of classes on everything, there should be general classes - and then headings. Oh well, study the code of my website (see sig) and you will perhaps see what I mean.
Your kidding me right? Based on what? Something you read on a forum? This is why I started the thread... to get people of the addiction Start adding other prominence factors and see what I mean (especially with Yahoo)
Lets make this clearer with an example. If I structure a page in such a way that all my text is in h1 (or even in some h-heading) and then with CSS-classes make the layout look normal, that is not going to help me in the serps, in fact it's going to hurt, because it looks spammy. But if I make my actual headings H...'s and text that is important bold or strong or emphasize (and again style all of that appropriately with CSS so it also looks good) - that is going to work in the serps.
It's all about contrast and natural text flow. It is natural to have a major heading for your page. That's why HTML came up with h1. It's also natural to have sub headings, and more, hense h1-6. I'd advise against using 4-6 for SEO. They're there for the semantics of scientific documents (the original use of HTML 30-odd years ago). It's also natural to have plain text on your page for the bulk of your content. It's very natural to emphasise certain points using bold and italic text. Lists are also good - but they should be semantically correct (ie - a list of things, nav links are good in a list). Here we a page of text with contrasting parts to show the importance of what the author is trying to say. Putting all your text in h1 or b tags may look spammy. to me it looks the the developer needs to learn html properly, then attempt tackle CSS! [either that, or get off the net completely]
What I feel regarding prominence is title words, then text on top portion of page. Making things contrast and bright I think, still G is not smart enough to see these things. G cannot understand Images yet. I believe, still prominence giving tags are <b> , <I>, <u> and sure <h>. Putting text in <h1> and <h2> may not look good even with css but they are header tags and are well accepted by W3C. Google have to consider them as a tag of prominence.
Hey North.... Strangely.. this all will ultimately have an effect on conversions as well. A professional page has much better conversions than a cheesy H tag stuffed one....
I personally believe the pages should be optimized for users first and then SEs. If you plan to optimize a page for users it should have a good layout and graphic as well. So it helps users come back, builds links (from users telling their friends about it), and it is SE friendly. Cheers, Nima
Hey Dave, They will help some though right? If used sparingly.. If not then I will need to remove them from nearly all of my sites that are in top spots. I could be in more if its hurting me.
Oh they certainly help.. the main point of the conversation was not to forget about the OTHER prominence factors... People go willy nilly with H1 this and H2 that.... RARELY does anyone include others into the conversation.... Using other formatting elements and prominence factors will help as well as simply plopping H tags here and there...
Grab a magazine.. have a look at how they use it... Search engineers are lovers of words and books. This is - after all - document indexing and retrieval. Matt is the worlds most famous Librarian ... lol So think of page layouts and text formatting... otherwise known as 'prominence' factors.. look at professional publications.. it's a great starting point IMO