How New Bloggers Should Use HTML Heading Tags

Updated: Sep 23, 2024

TL;DR

Heading elements serve many purposes.
They provide a structure for blog posts and our website.
We should care because they provide an optimal reading experience.

HTML elements are the structure of the web. They support and lift up all our blogs. One of the most important of these are heading tags. Those H1, H2, and H3 tags that you use when writing your blog posts. They have a meaning that goes beyond their use. We are going to investigate three things today. We need heading elements for accessibility, search engine optimization, and readability.

The first thing that we need to understand is that heading elements provide a hierarchy. They are H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6. The H1 is the largest header and they decrease in size from there. With H6 being the smallest.

This matters in blog design because it also provides a visual hierarchy. We can tell which items are important on a page based on how large they are. Effective use of heading tags helps people navigate our pages. They tell people what matters and how much based on their size.

Considerations for Accessibility

We can’t end this section without talking about accessibility. These are guidelines for building websites that are usable for everyone. I’m not an expert. Check out the Web Accessibility Initiative which provides the official documentation. Assistive devices use heading tags. They are landmarks for navigating a page. This allows people to skip around and find the sections they are looking for.

You should follow the hierarchy when using heading elements. An H1 tag should represent the most important heading of the page. There should only be one. Then add heading tags in decreasing size. The H2 tag marks new sections. They can be further subdivided by H3 and H4. You can have an H2 tag follow an H3 or H4 if it is the start of a new section.

Heading Tags’ Role in Search Engine Optimization

The advice is to get your keywords into your headings. This is because the heading elements indicate importance. They put an emphasis on those words. But this is not neccessary for achieving a higher rank. It may help the search engines understand the context of your article.

The most important heading for SEO is the H1 tag. This will reflect the title of your blog post. Always add your keyword to the title. This will appear in search results. This way people will know if your blog post is what they are looking for.

It may not always make sense to use a keyword in an H2 or H3 tag. This is okay. You may want to consider synonyms and related phrases to help with this. You can provide a relevant heading without saying exactly the same thing each time.

Heading Tags’ Role in Readability

This is something you need to consider every time you are writing a blog. Readability refers to how easy our articles are to read. This regards things like sentence structure, vocabulary, clarity, and white space. That’s right, we need to worry about things like the spacing of elements on the page.

You should aim for scannability. Readers should be able to get the gist of your blog post from a glance. This will help them determine if they want to read further. The way we do this is by using our heading elements. Combined with things like bullet points, images, and videos.

Heading tags’ role in readability is that of visual hierarchy. They stand out on the page. You want your audience to read your full blog post. So you need to grab their attention.

Heading elements also provide some respite from walls of text. They break things up! My rule of thumb is to add an H2 every time that I change a thought. You can use H3 to add related ideas as subsections to an H2. Notice when you are changing ideas. It wouldn’t be unusual to add a Heading every two to three paragraphs depending on the point you are making.

Conclusion

Heading tags are about the structure of our blog posts. They provide the bones that our content rests on. They provide an important role acting as navigation for screen readers. These HTML elements also help with SEO and the readability of our articles. It is important to think about their use and how they might aid readers. We should care about the experiences of our potential audience.

What other HTML elements would you like to learn about? Let us know in the comments.