Why Do Website Headers affect SEO?
Officially, they don’t - at least, according to Google. Google claims that website headers aren’t included as part of their ranking algorithm, yet they say headers do provide help when the Google bot is trying to figure out the outline and structure of your website.
So why do they affect SEO? Simple answer. Readability.
Background
Scenario 1: A Friend asks you to look over a snippet of their resume. First they ask you to look over the following -
My name is Ashley Michaels, and I have HR experience across 3 major corporations. At Mountain Printing company I was the HR assistant responsible for payroll and PTO. I accepted a promotion and moved to Hershey’s Chocolate company after 2 years and was mostly responsible for onboarding and vetting new employees. 3 years after that, I finally moved to HP Enterprises where I run the HR department for all of the west coast.
Scenario 2: Your same friend asks you to look over a different version of their resume -
HR Professional - Ashley Michaels - Work Experience:
Mountain Printing - 2 years
HR assistant responsible for payroll and PTO
Hershey’s Chocolate Company - 3 years
HR manager responsible for onboarding and vetting new employees
HP Enterprises - Current
HR Department Manager, West Coast
Now, while this might seem a very rudimentary example, it is worth looking at. Both scenarios contain the same information, yet scenario 2 stands out as immediately more understandable at a glance than scenario 1. Why is that? Well, she used applicable headers in her resume.
So why wouldn’t we apply the same logic to our website?
We have seen people have hang ups for one of 2 reasons:
Ignorance - Some people don’t even have a single h1 or h2 in their website. Or they might be missing on certain web pages.
Deliberate Design - People sometimes choose to show a video, a full screen picture, with text underneath it, or any number of other designs that don’t show h1 and h2 text at all
Please don’t let this be you.
80% or more of your web users will find you and interact with your website on their phone. It is an industry standard that if someone cannot understand your website in 5 seconds or less, they are highly likely to leave.
What we recommend
Always have a h1 and h2 clearly visible, on most every page of your website. A user needs to know exactly where they are in your website, and what that page is trying to communicate/trying to get them to do. The more time it takes them to figure this out, the less likely they are to do anything.
What does this look like in practice? Take 2 different screenshots of the same homepage for example.
Old screenshot of https://krelldds.com
Where the potential visitor/customer doesn’t even see the h1 tag until almost towards the bottom of the page, and is waiting on a series of images to load (slowly).
How are they supposed to know that this is a dentist in Houston?
Well a human could infer that from the address that is given above the navigation bar. But how is a crawler like the Google bot supposed to know?
What if we gave them a different homepage, like this?
New homepage for krelldds
If all you (or a robot) had time to read was the first large text you came across, in which scenario do you better understand the web page that you’re on? We think scenario 2. Don’t over think it. Tell someone exactly where they are at all times on your website. This takes the guess work out of the equation for both a user and a crawler.
Here is what this transition looks like in practice.
An Example of where to and where not to include headers
Why we recommend you have h1 and h2 tags
People are smart, robots are not. It doesn’t matter how advanced “AI” is, or how Google’s algorithm is changing for the better, a robot is still responsible for indexing and parsing your website. So make it easy for them!
Outline your website with good h1 and h2 tags.
This can only help you. Your users will understand your website better, and robots will understand your website better. It is a win-win.
We have taken clients from completely off the map, not indexed on ANY Google page whatsoever, to sitting at the number 2 slot for certain keywords. How is that? This is part of that technique. A person (and Google) is quickly able to determine what content is on the website by short, and descriptive headers.
Whether you are another freelance web developer like us, or are a professional looking to modify their website, our main take away for you is this - add h1 and h2 tags to your website because they are proven to help.