Search Engine Optimisation
A guide to SEO for the small business owner
This site is maintained by Seggy T Segaran, author of the book “The battle to get traffic to your website”.
Optimising Page Content - web page headings
In the Page Content section we looked at the importance of headings in being ranked by search engines. When looking at a web page it is not instantly obvious whether section headings on a page actually use the HTML <h1> or <h2> commands. This appendix shows how to check the number of headings on a particular web page.
The view source command available on Internet Explorer (IE) allows us to check the heading text say for the web page below.
When viewing this web page, move your mouse to an area outside the page and right click a menu will come up. Click on the “View Source” option. The screen will show the programming code that is behind the website. For someone not familiar with HTML this will look a mass of gobbledegook. However if you click on edit and then find you can enter <h1 and click next to find text with <h1> heading on this web page.
This shows that the text “Bluetooth headsets, Wireless Stereo headsets” is an H1 heading.
You can do the same to find text that is set as <h2> headings. Remember that while you can have a number of h2 headings on a page there should only be one h1 heading on a web page.
Summary: Headings
Heading text <h1> and <h2> are treated as a higher priority text by search engines. Here you can see how to check if your website heading text is correctly set.
