Headings H1, H2, H3

[Anthony1982]

Hi

I'm tidying up my site and had a few questions ref: use of headings.

1. My previous SEO company use to reduce the font size for headings, this seems a bit black hat to me ? Is this okay? For example heading text as font 6 and paragraph text as font 12.

2. If my key search term is 'driving lessons in London' and my second key search term is 'Driving Schools London', Is it better to have my H1 as: Driving Lessons London & H2 as: Driving Schools London

OR

H1: Quality Driving Lessons in London by driveJohnson's

H2: How our driving school in London can help you:

In my opinion the 2nd one reads better and i notice other companies doing it the second way, the first way i mentioned seems a bit old school and doesn't read well ?

3. Is it worth using H3 & H4 ? Can you use H2 more than once ?

4. Lastly could i have two key search terms within one heading, as long as the paragraph underneath is about the heading. For example:

H1: Our driving school in London offers cheap driving lessons

The two keywords search phrases here for me would be driving schools London and driving lessons london.

If someone could get back to me, i would be very grateful.

[Reinhart]

I think the two answers above pretty much cover it.

HX tags aren't a huge SEO factor so I wouldn't lose sleep over them.  Fashion your titles for users and if your page is about X Keyword.. GREAT  put that into the title naturally.  H1 is the only tag I wouldn't have more than one of.  H3+ could be duplicated on product titles and whatnot but again it isn't a huge SEO ranking factor anymore.

As far as font sizes I'd make them pleasing to the eye.  Google reads HX tags as they're intended to be used: Large titles at the top of the page in H1 are more relevant than multiple H3 tags with small text down lower etc.

Don't worry about making them "Exact match" so much as making them describe what is on the page.  Hopefully it happens to be describable with your keywords of value but having them make sense is the most important goal.

Hope that helps!

[TriforceMedia]

Hey Anthony,

The Headers tags are a usability feature.They're used to guide users on your site. Regardless of the name, a big part of SEO is user experience. Try to think of your headers from a users perspective.

1. While styling your headers is recommended, I suggest a larger font size for your headers than for your paragraph fonts.
2. Use the version that flows better and the keyword with more exact match search volume.
3. For most sites, I use H1 for site title, H2 for page/post titles, and H3s as document headers (I.E. Intro, Instructions, Conclusion, etc)
4. In your example you didn't use exact matches of your 2 keywords. So actually your keywords become "driving school in London" instead of your proposed "driving schools London" and "cheap driving lessons" instead of your proposed "driving lessons london". Always try to use exact matches for keywords within your meta tags, otherwise why bother doing the research and picking those keywords?

Hope this helps!

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Anthony,

Header tags are used to indicate structure in your html document, the styling you apply to them can be anything you like and think makes the page easier to read. While it is a bit unusual to have small headings and larger paragraph fonts, it is certainly not black hat.  Is it worth using h3 and h4? You are probably not going to see any seo benefit from using them, but if your document structure makes sense to have them, then use them. Can you use more than one h2? Yes! Check out this post by Yoast which should answer most of your questions regarding structure and proper usage.

In regards what text is best, I would go with your second 'more readable' suggestion. Write your content with users in mind first, it is easy to get caught up in minor variations with the idea that it might make some difference to your rankings. 99/100 it wont, and you will just get a page that reads a bit oddly for real users.