The body refers to the content on the webpage that is visible to searchers and any visitor to your website. Besides the title of the page, the body is probably the most important real estate on a website because the body is the content that search engines read to know what your site is about. Without the words on a web page your website says nothing at all.
The body of a web page provides opportunities to emphasize the words and phrases that you are trying to rank for. These opportunities are not only important to the search engines that find your website but also the people who find your website.
Header Tags
Header tags are tags labeled H1, H2 and H3, through to H6. I have personally never seen a website that had header tags beyond H4. Not to say that there are not any out there. I guess a website with a great deal of content may need more than a H4.
The purpose of header tags is to organize page structure, thoughts and ideas and important content on a web page. Generally, the content under a H1 is more important that the content under a H2 and a H3 and so on. In reality, I have used and have seen most websites use header tags simply as a section title with the first section being given a H1 tag and the next section being given a H2 and so on.
Many SEOs state that header tags are important onpage elements that need keywords and phrases important to that page to help with the focus and ranking of that page. I have no real test data to prove this idea wrong. Many sites that I have ranked have had header tags but some have not. I believe header tags should be used by any website with CSS style sheets because the appearance of header tags can only be controlled with style sheets.
It is common practice to put keywords and phrases into header tags. It is believed the tags help with the website rankings. I do not believe that header tags will, in any way, help a website to rank for competitive search terms. I do believe that header tags help search engines to understand what specific parts of the page are about, as well as the page as a whole. Header tags will help to focus the topic of the page they are on with search engines which will help that page to rank better for the desired words and phrases that the incoming link text and the title and description target.
Obviously, header tags can aide in your rankings but alone provide minimal ranking abilities. It is smart to include your desired search terms within your header tags but repeating the search terms is not recommended. It is best to use variations of your desired search phrases in header tags and it is best to use sentences in your header tags as opposed to just stuffing keywords into the tags.
For websites that do not use style sheets, header tags are probably not feasible. Without style sheets, header tags can be large and ugly on the page. Fortunately, websites without style sheets can still emphasize sections of a web page without styles or headers. You simply use the tag.
Any Successful SEO Strategy includes strong elements on page to emphasize words and phrases that are important to that page. Using the tag in the place of header tags with enlarged text is just as effective as header tags to organize page structure, thoughts and ideas and important content on a web page and will essentially perform the same function as header tags without putting large ugly text on your website. The tag is especially useful within the body of the web page text to help important words and especially phrases stick out to the reader of that page, as well as the search engines.
The element will not make your website rank on the first page of Google but is excellent for telling search engines what a page is about and what is important on the page.
Link to this page
Nashville SEO, Google Places and Social Media Marketing. Serving small businesses in Nashville, Franklin, Brentwood Tennessee and every city across the US and Canada!
Recent Comments