Using the various heading tags in your html can be a very helpful tool for organizing your site and it can also have some big effects on search engine ranking. The exact effect on search engine ranking seems to be a debatable topic but many experts agree that it is a very important tool and Thomas Bindl actually wrote that it is the “second most important on-page criteria.” Russ Jones adds that heading tags are, “In my opinion, the second most important HTML tag available.”

The common theory is that you place your most important keyword text within an H1 tag. This tells the search engines that are indexing your site that these words/phrases are the most important thing on your site. You can place the second most important keywords/phrases in the H2 tags and so on. The search engines will read these heading tags and take the information into consideration.

Chris Boggs believes the heading tags are most effective when used in conjunction with other factors on your site. He says, “If it helps to further support the page’s title and the IBL (inbound link) anchor text. Using it alone without having IBLs using it will likely not give too much boost.” This makes perfect sense. You want your entire site to tell the search engines a story. That story starts with a title (your title tag) then is told with body text and that body text is highlighted with heading tags. When you combined these elements with inbound links to your site that are using an anchor text that matches your heading tags it tells the engines what your site is about, what is important on it and that other people also feel it is important in the same way because they are linking to it using the same descriptive text that you are using on your site. Together these things can tell the search engines the story of a good site with valuable content and well organized keywords and the search engines will respond to this story with good rankings.

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