Utilizing Headers And Titles For SEO
Did you know that there is a difference between off page optimization and on page optimization? Yes, there is. And what I will talk about here has to do with optimizing with “on page” techniques. These are simple remedies to increase your traffic.
You already know how important keywords are in your copy. That almost goes without saying at this point. ;-) And you should put the most effort in your Web site development with the use of keywords. It’s not something to ever neglect. This is vital!
You may have already been told that it is ideal to have your main keyword within your URL. However, that’s not always possible at this late date. You might already have your URL and can’t go to the trouble of changing it.
But there are things you can do now to make your Web page better optimized. And you should take each page and treat it as a separate entity. I’ll explain…
The first trick here is to make good use of title tags. You do this by having each page with the targeted keyword appearing in the title of the page. If the entire Web site is about printers, then, depending on your market & keyword research results, most Web page files probably start with or contain the keyword printers. You can name them printershp.html and printerscanon.html and the like. I’ll bet the search engines will like this. ;-)
Another important point is to take care in using Header tags. You will find that most SEO people will recommend only having one single H1 tag per page that contains the main keyword. Then your other H2 and H3 tags should have within them the secondary keywords.
You could consider this a sort of puzzle game, listing out all the main keywords, the secondary keywords and then working out where to put them. The content will have to read correctly and be of high quality, of course.
These are changes you can easily make to optimize your Web site. Get those keywords in there where the search engines can find them. Use Headers and Titles intelligently.
You want those search engines liking your site, for when they do, you get indexed. And when you get indexed, you will likely show up higher and higher in the results when folks search for your product or service.
All these recommendations are geared to make you more successful with your site. I like to see my friends make more money and increase profits!
—Marcus Hochstadt
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48 Responses to Utilizing Headers And Titles For SEO
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Its been a while, good to see your back with more great info, thanks.
Hello
Useful information, what is the best method having 1 keyword as a title tag or variations of it as well . How does it make a difference? Does using 2-3 keywords in the title tag dilutes the competitiveness of the keywords or it can prove beneficial for the website.
Thanks
Shilpa
@ Hey Josh, wait… I’m still in holiday mood, not? ;-D
@ Shilpa, I’d say 2 times max, and variations… if there’s enough space why not. However, maximum 80 characters long. And do make sure to start the title tag with the page’s keyword.
~Marcus
Great post, Its really helpful for optimizing title & header tags of a particular page. It is part of a page so important to be cared.
Let me try your tips in my website.
It’s been awhile since you have posted another entry. I am also using this tips on my blog.
Optimizing the art of SEO is continuous and effective. Several companies hire Web Designers and Copywriters to promote their site and get more traffic. Once again, I appreciate your tips about traffic increases.
hi
Thanks for sharing this, it is very helpful. We must also take note that websites are basically for its human visitors so we must not do to much on page optimization on it.
I found that using a set keywords in the title with some proximity between them ie. for the keywords gardening tools you title would be – Gardening tools – Gardening pincher tools – compost tools
or what ever your keyword sets are… but with a proximity between your other keywords in the title. This helped a lot for the ranking of one of my sites. I’ll be testing it with my other sites soon
I’ve never read anything about header tags before. Thank you very much for the insight!
Excellent! When we went to SES type links, our presence on the web more than tripled. The SES links allowed for the product names to be in the URL. Business picked right up and its one of the best things we ever did.
The title is the absolute most important aspect of on page SEO. As far as using headers ( tags), it’s important to use the and as close to the top of the page as possible. Also, and tags weight into the equation as well, however, when using the heading tags, make sure the text ddirectly beneath them is relative to the heading tags.
Well put and clear. Another aspect to mention : make deep research on keywords. You may want to attract “right” visitors, not bouncy ones.
Nice article of SEO. Thanks for sharing.
SEO is never die if we talk about it :) thank for sharing
“You already know how important keywords are in your copy”
I prefer to write for humans rather than search engines, that way you are more likely to receive links, which the SEs love.
there was an article on seomoz couple months back. Most experts agree that headers and title are very important on-page factors and not to mention your website copy with proper density.
Hey Marcus,
First time commentor… I am wondering if duplication of keywords is good, bad and/or ugly in the title. For example if you are using terms like “xyz skills”, “xyz strategy” and “effective xyz” as your keyword terms,how would you handle that?
Would you include all of the terms or avoid the duplication of the work “xyz”? Thanks a lot in advance for your advice.
David J. Parnell
Hi David,
Occasionally, you may wanna use all three. But principally, it’s a good idea to focus on one keyword per page.
In other words, in the case that you want to use three keywords, I’d write three pages.
~Marcus
Its definately important to have all titles and headers different as this shows the SEs you have different pages in your website, if they are all the same they see it as just 1 page and so you wont get ranked as highly
I’ve never read anything about header tags before
Some excellent points made on SEO. I have utilized them on my customer service site that I have been working on now actually – thanks for the advice!
On page optimization is a great way to tell Google exactly what your site is about. It really makes a difference when you place your main keyword in your URL, post title, first sentence of your post and the last sentence of your post, also in bold at least once. Do this and you will see a definite change in your rankings in the SERPs. Great post man!
Thanks for the tip! Now I know where I’ve been going wrong all this time :)
I have never really bothered about the titles and headers till now and I think that does explain why I don’t get much of organic traffic to my site.
I think these are basic things that I can do myself and the results too. So thanks for passing it on.
Titles and Meta Description tags are very important.
I did reseach in my language for keyword “durys” (“doors” in Lithuanian).
Look at first positions in G search for “durys” – all those pages Title, descriptions are packed with “durys” and it’s forms “duru”, “duris” etc. Some Descriptions have almost 50% keyword saturation.
The same is valid for search “doors”.
Getting good rank is not easy at the present time.
Nice post
I Totally agree, but what I do is I make 4 secondary pages with each of them another keyword. I also look to the competition and intent of the keywords I use.
It works!
Thanks for explaining the necessity of the H2 and H3 tags – and what keywords to add in them.
I’ve finally gotten all my pages to have the correct H1 tags – time to start over optimizing the H2 H3 tags.
Good advice on header tags. Since changing mine and only using one H1 header with keywords, it has helped page ranking. Unfortunately, I didn’t include keywords in my website address which was a mistake, but I’ll learn from it. Thanks for the great advice.
Adding Heading not only benefits in terms of Seo, but also in arranging content properly in website.
many people don’t take the time to deal with the header tags, which is not smart…as header tags are still used by most all of the search engines
By combining all of the ethical methods for SEO, you will get the best results. Always put your reader first, and don’t try to fool search engines with hidden text or unrelated key phrases. One tip: when creating your internal file names, use the primary key phrase (as you do in your title, meta tags, etc.), but in the file names use dashes or underscores, such as seo-web-design rather than seowebdesign.
Thank you for the post bolding up the titles and headers with keywords which should be given preference..,
Thanks for the great information. I have only just submitted my site and am waiting for indexing. I am going to make a few changes with the titles of the pages.
Thanks again!
Thanks for the info! All I know about SEO I learned from WordPress, LOL, so now I’m branching out and trying to learn the fundamentals. This is useful. :)
When I write SEO-texts I’m always very aware of the title tag and the description text. I try to get the search word in as the first word of the title tag. Then I repeat the search word very early in the description text. This way you make it as easy as possible for Google to asses and index your page.
Great post, but barely scratching the surface with regards to title tag usage. I’m looking forward to an elaboration on the subject. :)
Marcus Hochstadt,
Title tags of different web pages should overlap each other with main keyword phrases but should differ with long tail keywords, that method of on-page optimization brings authority to the web site.
Title tag and heading – h1 tag of one web page should be almost the same. Title tag and heading – h1 tag as well as subheadings h2, h3 … should also overlap each other with main keyword phrase but should differ with long tail keywords of chosen theme of web page. Overlapping always brings authority and credibility.
Thanks Marcus. I optimize my blog by putting one nice title with keyword. I notice that this is one important SEO factor. When I published one article by putting one nice title, after few days I start to gain visitor to my blog by searching for that keyword I use on title.
Thats nice of you marcus! I tried putting keywords on title tags but it shows on the top of the page, so you can have too many keywords otherwise it will look funny?
Amazing how difficult the SEO topic is. We can get some keywords to the top in yahoo and bing, but google is a difficult beast to figure out. I appreciate info like this, and while we still haven’t figured it all out, it certainly does help!
I started a blog few months ago just to discover how tough SEO really is, so I am constantly on the look for some useful tips and tricks on the subject. Definitely looking forward to your techniques. Will soon put them to the test!
I love you in depth info on SEO. I’ve been working on it for some time, and am still astounded how diverse a subject it really is. Thanks for your useful insights
Interesting article – On-page SEO can be just as important as off-page IMO. I definitely agree about focusing on a single topic per page, and the importance of title tags and headings. I found that some of my pages rank quite well, presumably because of effective on-page SEO, as I haven’t even backlinked them anywhere!
Thanks for the tips about Utilizing headers and titles for SEO. I would try it one of these days. Great Job!
when you want to utilize and make use of your keywords. You have to do it properly and don’t ever reach to the point of abusing it. Just like what authors and site owners are doing were in they over stuffed there sites with there keywords resulting to ban and getting penalized.
Thanks for the great information. I have only just submitted my site and am waiting for indexing. I am going to make a few changes with the titles of the pages.
Thanks again!