Is 4 levels too much?

Interesting. If writing for the user is the most important thing, why should we care about <h1>'s <h2>'s <p>'s and so forth AT ALL? Did Cutts really mean what he said?

 

I think that is what they call Truthiness. Kind of like truth, but not really..

 

When you write a book, or a letter, etc on paper it is wise to use paragraphs, headers, and so on else you would have nothing but a garbled mess that is near impossible to read. <h1>, <p>, and so on are a website's way of accomplishing the same thing which when not used properly makes webpages at best hard to use, at worst a garbled mess.

Writing for the user, whether on paper or on screen, requires formatting to ensure readability, so, yes, PROPERLY using those tags is PART of writing for the user.

 

Because not all users are SIGHTED, which is why we had those separate tags and they have had meanings from long before search engines were even a thing for websites!

The entire purpose of HTML -- from day one -- was to address the problem of transmitting well written documents across a plethora of device and user limitations, saying what things "are" or "would be" in a professionally written document, so that the user-agent (a browser is a UA but a UA isn't always a browser) can best convey that meaning to the user. Didn't matter if it was a teletype at the CIA, a TTY for the blind, the 21x22 text of the VIC=20 Linus Torvalds cut his teeth on, or the 1152x864 6 bit monochrome display TBL was using at CERN when he created the first browser!

Nothing at all like today where we're all using the exact same size displays at the exact same resolution. For those of you who missed it, that was sarcasm.

There are grammatical reasons for things to be italic: when you're <cite>ing a source, when adding <em>phasis, or when it's something like a book title (which is <i>'s job as the catch-all). Just as <strong> is for "more emphasis" and <b> is for things like entities in a legal document. Not all user-agents can portray or render text as bold or italic, so the entire point of using the correct tags for bold and italic is so the UA can try to convey this by other means.

This is why <b> and <i> are still tags (despite some jackasses a decade ago claiming they were deprecated, 100% fiction) and should NOT be used for presentation alone. It's why H1..H6 do not mean "fonts in different weights and sizes". It's why <p> does not mean "put a margin around this". It's why HR does not mean "draw a line across the screen"... because not all devices HTML can be sent to are even capable of showing bold or italic. The use of such visual queues in a professionally written document is done for grammatical and structural reasons. Thus HTML exists to convey those reasons allowing the UA to best choose how to do so.

Which is also why HTML 3.2 style presentational markup was supposed to go the way of the dodo, and the morons who replicate that type of idiocy with "classes for every CSS property" have failed to extract their cranium from 1997's rectum. See "Frameworks".

Thus the saying "If you choose any of your HTML tags based on the default appearance, you're choosing all the wrong markup for all the wrong reasons." -- and why I extend that attitude towards ID's and classes. If you're making code like class="text-center box-center box-shadow col-3-s col-5-m" you have utterly failed to divine the purpose of HTML.

HTML is supposed to be for everyone, so writing for the user includes semantic markup. So that alternative navigation works. So that users on screen readers and braille readers aren't left out in the cold. So that search engines can make sense of your document since they too don't have eyeballs and wouldn't even look at screen media stylesheets if not for needing to pimp slap sleazy dirtbag SEO tricks like content-cloaking... since search engines don't have eyes.

And if developers would consider something more than their own perfect vision and the screen they happen to be seated in front of, well... it'd put me out of work.

That is why semantic markup is important, it makes the web be for everyone, not just the perfectly sighted on high end screen media devices.

... and that's why starting the page with anything other than a H1 is garbage. That's why having more than one H1 on a page is garbage. It's why skipping over heading levels when branching down -- like skipping from H2 to H5 -- is ignorant incompetent half-assed garbage. It's why wrapping LABEL in <p>aragraphs is garbage. It's why wrapping a sole IMG in a <P> is garbage. It's why FORM without FIELDSET is garbage. Its why failing to create a proper association between INPUT/TEXTAREA/SELECT and LABEL are garbage. It's why PLACEHOLDER is not a LABEL and the artsy-fartsy types who pull that stunt need to **** right off.

If you don't have proper semantics, you're not writing for the user. That's why abusing semantics for SEO purposes is black hat trash that might work for a week or two, but is more likely to get pimp-slapped sooner than later.

Which is why those of us who write proper semantics with separation of concerns sit here laughing at how know-nothing SEO "experts" run around like chickens with their heads cut off every time there's a Google algo update. A panic based entirely in their own scam-artist dirtbaggery and abuse of the system since algo changes are typically done for one purpose above all others... backhanding the people who try to abuse/misuse the system.

Thus where most SEO "experts" run their biggest scam! They either create by way of the garbage markup a co-dependency for every time the algo backhands the abuse, or worse they use sleazy tricks that only work for a couple weeks so they can leave the site owner holding the bag... in a "this here's a story 'bout Billie Joe and Bobby Sue" kind of way.

Two young lovers wiiiiith nothin' special to do

THEN people wonder why I say the majority of SEO "experts" are snake oil peddlers.

 

I just expaned on the topic of my previous post in this thread by making an article on Medium. I'd link to it, but this forum blocks medium links because of Xenforo's sloppy crappy handling of URI's.

So even an established member like myself has to:

medium dot com/@deathshadow/news-flash-youve-probably-been-using-html-wrong-2dfb62755280

 

I believe that you are doing anything wrong.
Your ultimate product can be in as further as 5 sub-directories.
Just ensure that you keep the name of each subdirectory as short as possible.

So go ahead with your plan.