How to Get a Powerful SEO Advantage from Your H1 Tag

[James]

Here is a technique designed to get an increased SEO advantage from your h1 tag. It is not at all difficult to apply but allows you to have more of your keywords in the title tag.

The idea is to have a subtitle above or below your main title, but instead of having two separate title tags (using a small one such as an h2 or h3 above or below the h1 tag, both the subtitle and regular title are within the h1 tag but styled with html/css.

The first step is to make a css code for a class in your css file or head of the file. If in your css file it would be something like this:

.smaller{
font-size: 80%;
line-height: 80%;
}

Note that in addition to the font size, you need to adjust the line-height or the two lines will be too far apart.

<h1>Debt Elimination<br /><span class="smaller">Get Out of Debt and Stay That Way</span></h1>

This will produce a title that looks something like this:

Debt Elimination
Get Out of Debt and Stay That Way

Of course you can reverse the order depending on the look you want, like this for example:

<h1><span class="smaller">Get Out of Debt and Stay That Way</span><br />Debt Elimination</h1>

Get Out of Debt and Stay That Way
Debt Elimination

This technique allows you to include two or more keywords, "Get Out of Debt" and "Debt Elimination" in my example, both in the h1 tag which can make a real difference in your SEO efforts since the h1 tag is one of the most important aspects of on-page SEO. Most of the time I am able to include three keywords in my titles using this technique.

[Sundance]

That's a great suggestion, James! That had not occurred to me. I'm very much a newbie with coding. I understand preparing a title tag, keywords tag, and meta description tag. But is the h1 tag the page's "title tag"? Or is it the main heading on the page itself? (or maybe both - I'm pretty ignorant about this)

[James]

But is the h1 tag the page's "title tag"? Or is it the main heading on the page itself?

The h1 tag is the title on the page itself, and is referred to as the main heading as well. You should only use one h1 tag on each page.

The title tag is in the head of your code and does not appear on your page directly; it appears on the browser heading at the very top of the browser window. For example, right now I can read "How to Get a Powerful SEO Advantage from Your H1 Tag" up there.

There is also a way to get more out of your title tag that is more well known. Use the upright bar just above the enter key on your keyboard. In my example I would have:

<title>Debt Elimination | Get Out of Debt and Stay That Way</title> for my title tag in the head.

This technique allows you to work more keywords into your title tag just as the tutorial shows how to do so with the h1 tag.

Note this, however. You still want to be a compact as you can because these tags are diluted by the number of words used. If you use 7 words total each word will get 1/7th of the value; if you use 10 words each word will get 1/10th of the value.

[Aidenmoor]

Ye, totally agreed that H1 tags are important as far as search engine optimization is concerned. but most of us don't care much about these formatting tags and we simply emphasize on the title and body of the content. Thanks for your realization and thoughts. Segragating your contents into various paragraphs and putting them under various formatting tags are important because it makes the content more readable and can hook readers for longer time compared to putting all the eggs in the same basket.

[classifieds1989]

<h1>Tag is not necessary , you can also place your important keyword with bold or in a big font size ,both give same advantages.

[amilyjoe]

This is really a good and innovative technique in SEO and enable to add more then one keyword in title alone without looking spamming.

[tim-the-traveler]

Hi James,

Thank you for the suggestion! I have a concern though: wouldn't having too many words in the H1 tag dilute the impact of each keyword? It's a question that often confronts me when I approach labeling my H1 and title tags*: how many words max do I put there.

I think there is a need to achieve an equilibrium between competition for a short-tail keyword and traffic for a long-tail one. Stuffing the H1 with too many words may reduce our chance to rank well versus someone else whose H1 is shorter.

What do you think?

(* BTW, the H1 and title tags are two different places on the page.)

[James]

Tim, you are right about the dilution factor so it is good to not be any 1onger than necessary. However, the title and <h1> tags are the most influential on-page SEO factors for introducing your niche keywords and establishing the theme of the page. I try not to get too long, but I think it is more important to get the keywords into those two tags than to gain the added impact of a shorter arrangement although I keep both principles in mind.

My reasoning is that I can build the strength of the words by having the keywords in my <h2> tags, in bold in the text, etc. throughout the page. I usually have three keywords and I think it is important to get them into the title and <h1> if at all possible but for the reason you mention I am sometimes able to include only two keywords even using these techniques.

This is one reason I like using the double line for the <h1> and the bar for the title. You can use briefer phrases for the different keywords since you don't have to make them into more complete sentences.

[LightsOut]

According to HTML best practices and Google guidelines, that is not something you should do.
There is a reason for the H2, H3, H4, H5, H6 tags to exist. Stuffing your title or H1 with keywords that should not normally be there will not help you in SEO.
Google would rather give you more benefit for using correct structure - H1, H2, H3 than for stuffing everything into the H1 tag.
Actually google webmaster guidelines encourage you to make use of the H2, H3 tags.

The best thing you can do is use your MAIN keyword in your H1 and keep it short.
Then use your 3-5 extra keywords for your H2 tags, and if your article allows it, use H3 under H2 as well.

The general tip here is - do not try to trick or overoptimize it. Keep it real. Make it easy for the search search engine to understand your code and you will be rewarded.

For reference look here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/doc...rter-guide.pdf
And this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIn5qJKU8VM

By the way, I am pretty sure that google is smart enough to give less importance to words with CSS like "font-size:80%".

[James]

Of course you do not want to do anything like keyword stuffing and I hope no one would think I am recommending it. It is a black hat method I would strongly reject. But you do want to carefully use the key tags like the <title> and <h1> to reflect your content in a way that will result in the best possible SEO results and that IS both what Google wants and what you need if you want to get traffic.

The idea is to carefully and appropriately use your keywords in these tags and have them be about the content so they go together and reflect the true theme of the page so viewers will find what they are looking for when searching. If your keywords and your page subject are the same then they absolutely should be in the title and <h1>. If your keywords should not be in them then you have chosen the wrong keywords for your content.

It is possible to have very short tags that are completely useless for SEO. These are not appreciated by Google either because they cannot index your page in a way that satisfies readers. In fact you could be ignored by Google and your potential readers will never hear about you. For example, how many sections have you seen headed with "Introduction" or "Conclusion."

Most experts in SEO (or at least those who appear to be experts) say that seven words is optimal for getting SEO advantage from your title and <h1>. More than that and your words lose a lot of value. Words like "and," "or," "that," and "How to..." are ignored by the search engines and don't count. So the examples I gave originally are about the maximum length. A few words less wouldn't hurt, but seven counting words should be fine.

Personally I do not have much trouble getting two keywords into a title most of the time and sometimes three. For example, if I am writing about budgeting with a spending plan I might use "Budget With a Spending Plan." It is perfectly natural, appropriate for the theme, uses two keywords and is in no way stuffing. But I only do what I can do with naturally correct language even if it is only one keyword.

The two techniques I shared are strictly design elements. They should be used for appearance and to make it possible to use larger type fonts when the available space suggests it or saying the same thing in fewer words by separating two short phrases. They should not be used in a way that dilutes the tag's SEO value by adding too many words, for example, and certainly not for stuffing.

[LightsOut]

I agree. I was just looking at your example:

<h1>Debt Elimination<br /><span class="smaller">Get Out of Debt and Stay That Way</span></h1>

I think that is too much for an H1 and anyway there no reason why you could not devide them and put them in separate <h1> tags.

For example you can have

<h1> Debt Elimination </h1>

where you could talk about debt elimination in general and have a couple of H2's inside and then another H1 with "Get Out of Debt and Stay That Way" where you could use H2's to describe each step that you should take to do so.

Even Mat Cutts says it, there is nothing wrong with having 2 H1's on your page, if the content requires you to do so.
Anyway, if you really want to place those keywords on the top of your html code (just after the <body> tag).. then I guess your method could work pretty well.

[zenzai]

HMmm... Has anyone actually tested if this works or not? I would not want to incorporate this on my 500k links in my site, and then be penalized by google for keyword stuffing. Doesn't h2, h3 etc do the same trick?

[Mukesh]

HMmm... Has anyone actually tested if this works or not? I would not want to incorporate this on my 500k links in my site, and then be penalized by google for keyword stuffing. Doesn't h2, h3 etc do the same trick?

Good point, Mostly used tags are H2, H3 in blogs. although james explained well, this is really a good tutorial about H1 tag.

[deccanbazaar.biz]

Seriously speaking the method you have is just awesome because this can give some extra keywords in h1 tag.

[uyendt]

cool, cool