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December 15, 1997
Heading Tags and More: Secrets to Better Rankings
After you submit your page, most of the major search engines with the exception of Yahoo will index (read and then store) all the words of your page to determine "themes". Their automated indexing engines attempt to discern what your page is about so that when a user conducts a search, it will return pages that it feels are most relevant to that topic. If you can make your page appear near the top of the list when users search for topics related to your Web site or business, you'll see all kinds of new traffic.
When building web pages, many people overlook one of the more influential elements to the way an engine scores the page: The HEADING tag. Headings are the larger print, or subtitles on a page. Headings come in various sizes represented by the HTML tags <H1>, <H2>, <H3>, etc. where <H1> is larger than <H2>. Many engines will take the keywords within heading tags and assign them far more weight than words found in the body text. When you think about it, this is only logical since headings often give an overview of the page, or a section topic for the page.
Therefore, repeat your most important keywords in the heading tags just as you should do with the <TITLE> tag for the page. Example of a page with heading tags:
<HTML><HEAD>
<TITLE>Widgets and More!</TITLE>
<meta name="description" content="Widgets by Jerry's Widget Emporium are the best widgets money can buy.">
<meta name="keywords" content="blue widgets,green widgets,red widgets, Jerry's Widget Emporium">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<H1>Widgets Explained:</H1>
<P>Widgets by Jerry's Widget Emporium are the best widgets money can buy.</P>
</BODY>
</HTML>
The above example assumes Widget is my most important keyword which is why I repeated it in the Title, the Body, and very importantly, in the Heading tag. Use multiple heading tags throughout your page if you like, but always try to stuff them with the keywords you're trying to emphasize. If you're using Microsoft FrontPage or another WYSIWYG editor, it should allow you to select a heading "style" or some other way to visually create the equivalent to an HTML heading tag.
TIP#1: If you're building a "doorway" page as described in our September issue, always keep the page content focused to a single theme and a limited number of keywords so you don't "dilute" the effectiveness of the page. Avoid the temptation to write about things unrelated to "widgets" or your primary keywords, at least for the doorway pages you want to rank better.
TIP#2: Please notice that I used the keyword "widget" at the BEGINNING of the title tag, the heading, and the first paragraph. When you're having a tough time getting your page scored higher for your keyword, having the keyword in the FIRST position rather than as the second or third word can make all the difference.
TIP#3: Notice that I purposely used the plural form of the word Widget to double our visibility. Always add an "S" to your keyword whenever possible.
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