When it comes to reader engagement, crafting an attention-grabbing headline is not the only thing you should consider. You might even write a great introductory paragraph that will make your readers click the little “read more” link on your blog, but the hard part is drawing their eyes down the page, and keeping them hooked until the final message.

Great content is essential, but it only goes so far. What your readers are looking for is a summary of the main points, in an easy-to-find-and-follow format. Just like reading a magazine, readers want to be able to skim your content and still pick up the essential points.

For this purpose, we have HTML heading tags such as H1, H2, H3, H4, and so on and so fourth. While H1 and/or H2 will be used for your catchy post titles (check out the guide on SEO-friendly headlines), H3 and H4 should be used throughout your post to draw the reader down the page and summarize portions of your content. Either tag has a slightly different purpose, and we’ll discuss how to use them in your posts.

When to include H3 tags

So when should you include these tags? There are a few instances when you might use an H3 tag in your content. The first is when you shift in the focus of your blog post – like moving from the introduction to the first main point. In addition, you should use h3 tags in the following situations:

1. When changing the main subject of your post (examples to definitions);
2. When separating quoted sources;
3. When separating unrelated information (such as in showcase posts).

H3 tags are slightly smaller than H2 tags, and will provide an obvious contrast to the surrounding content. In addition, search engines will treat them on differently than the H1 or H2 tags, making your pages more relevant.

When to use H4 tags

The even smaller h4 tag should be used within related content areas to divide content even further. You could use H4 tags when:

1. Pointing out a particular situation;
2. Separating source from content;
3. Asserting calls-to-action (“download now”);
4. Asking for feedback;
5. Separating your feed and other auto-content from the post.

H4 tags are fantastic for organizing information within different areas of you posts, such as when you present a download with specifics or a showcase with a similar layout per entry. In addition, h4 tags carry the same SEO effects as h3 tags, incurring a different kind of indexing by bots.

Conclusion

By using sub-headings in your posts, you can help the reader distinguish the main ideas in your content more easily, and improve the layout of your content overall. Sub-headings are especially essential for longer posts, such as pillar articles or reviews. Consider them not only for their SEO value, but also for their blog post sculpting usefulness.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

If you’re a blogger, by now you have already found out that the majority of your blog’s traffic comes from search engines and social media & bookmarking sites. There is a lot of information available on any of these two traffic sources to help you get started in either optimization you choose to make, although I would suggest you do both, to diversify your incoming traffic.

I know that for many start-up bloggers, the blogs they manage are probably the first contact they had with a website from the role of an administrator, and surely the first contact they had with the concept of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). In terms of blog optimization, I have shared with you a few articles in the past that offer a good range of blog SEO tips, so, in case you need to refresh your memory, feel free to go through them again.

The problem is that even with the available information, those new to the concept of SEO tend to try anything and everything, without taking the time to decide what’s best and what could actually damage their rankings. In what follows I’m going to present a list of the top SEO mistakes you must avoid.

SEO Mistake #1 – Ignoring Basic Search Engine Guidelines

From my point of view, this is the biggest mistake a SEO beginner could make. SEO is a set of actions meant to improve search engine rankings, so the most important thing would obviously be to first check out the targeted search engines’ quality and submission guidelines. Here are the links to the guides of two of the most important search engines, Google and Yahoo:

• Google SEO & Quality Guidelines
• Yahoo SEO Guidelines

Any further SEO actions you take should abide by the above guidelines. After all, is their “approval” you’re seeking.

SEO Mistake #2 – Not Having a Keywords Strategy

There is one common mistake that people do and it’s about the way they understand the concept of using keywords. Keywords are not what you would want you’re website to be found for, but what your website could show up for in relation to its content.

I’ve seen hundreds of websites with that keywords META filled with the most incredible and unrelated words and phrases, most times on the homepage. It’s a mistake to target numerous keywords and actually diminishing that chances to succeed with either one of them.

The development of a keyword strategy is done in strong relationship with your blog’s structure. Just like your blog’s homepage is a gateway to more detailed content topics, so should be its keywords and the keywords of its subpages, categories and posts. Focus on choosing keywords that go hand in hand with the actual content and topics you approach rather than keywords that you’d think might be representative.

Work from your homepage downward in your blog structure, going from more general keywords, to very specific keywords as you get to the posts, like in the diagram below:

Here are 3 past articles you might find useful when it comes to developing and maintaining a keyword strategy:

• How to check and improve your WordPress SEO
• Using Keywords for Blog Optimization
• Advantages of Long Tail Keywords Optimization

SEO Mistake #3 – Ignoring the title tags (H1, H2, H3, H4…)

When writing and publishing blog posts, many ignore these HTML heading tags. You’ve probably seen that I use them in most of my posts, and not only for optimization reasons. They also help your readers better follow the post’s structure and ideas.

Use appropriate keywords inside these tags. The search engine bots give special attention to these headings and continue to “read” your content based on the information found inside them. It builds up relevancy.

Also, a look at how your theme uses heading tags, SEO wise, would do good too.

SEO Mistake #4 – Too much focus on one of the optimization elements

Due to not filtering the incoming information on SEO, some people make the mistake on focusing too much on optimizing the meta tags, or the titles, or the body text of posts. Optimization is a process that should cover all aspects in a very close relationship.

Once you’ve decided which keywords to use, make sure you optimize your page title, META’s, subheading, body text, links, alternate (ALT) text on images and so on. The more consistent the whole page looks in terms of optimization, the better the chances of a higher ranking.

SEO Mistake #5 – SEO is Not a One Time Process

No Sir, it’s not! It’s a matter of trial and error, of research and observation of evolution. Don’t make the mistake of resting at peace once you’ve finished optimizing a page or website. Check the results from time to time, adjust your keyword strategy if necessary. You don’t have to do this only because search engines change algorithms. You have to do it also because you’re definitely not the only one targeting those keywords, assuming you’re targeting competitive ones – otherwise, what’s the point?

Research -> Analize -> Experiment. It’s the only path to success, in any field.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Another quiet Sunday in the blogosphere, as usual. This morning I thought about writing another link share post or a WordPress theme recommendation, but later I’ve decided to break the pattern (since it’s all so quiet) and make Sundays the host of a blog SEO tips series. In this first post I’m going to talk about the importance of using SEO friendly titles (H1, H2, H3) and the right way to do so.

Usual Coding Patterns in WordPress Themes

If you’re even a bit familiar with the WordPress themes, by now you’ve probably took a look at your theme’s files. Blog pages are rendered through an association of a few PHP files with standard names (index.php, archive.php, single.php) with different templates of the theme, based on the content type.

The index.php file usually stands for your home page, also being capable of replacing any other template that hasn’t been already defined. So, if you don’t have a template for search results (search.php), the index file will take over and render your search results page.

Each of these templates includes smaller pieces of code to build up the final result. The most used are header.php, sidebar.php and footer.php.

For now, we’ll limit our attention to the following files in your theme’s folder:

• header.php
• index.php
• single.php
• page.php (not every theme has it)
• archive.php, search.php (not every theme has them)

Optimizing the Header File

Having your primary keyword present at the top of you page it’s very important.
Considering the fact that most themes come with text based logos instead of graphics, we’ll be looking for the <h1> tag in the header.php file.

If you look at the WordPress default theme will find this piece of code, close to the end of the file:

<h1><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1>
<div class="description"><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></div>

The first line displays your blog’s title into a link to the homepage, inside the H1 tag.
The second line displays your blog’s description.

H1 is the most important heading style and the coding recommendations state that only one should be used per page. When talking about a homepage, archive page or search results, it’s best that we optimize these pages according to our main keywords, therefore this H1 tag is required.

But what about on the single post pages? When we display single post, we would want to have their pages optimized according to their content, not the overall keywords of the blog. This is where the H1 should be removed from the header.php file, and placed instead of the H2 surrounding the posts title, to give make it more visible and representative in the eyes of a search engine spider.

How do we do that? First we need to add some conditional tags in the header.
Look for the piece of code that I’ve listed above and replace it with this one:

<?php if(is_single() OR is_page()) {
// On single post pages and static pages we use this code
?>
<h2><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1>
<div class="description"><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></div>
<?php }
else {
// On home page and archive style pages we use this code
?>
<h1><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1>
<div class="description"><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></div>
<?php } ?>

By using some WordPress conditional tags we managed to limit the use of the H1 HTML tag to all archive style pages (including the homepage).

Next, we move to single posts and static pages to continue our optimization.

Optimizing the Single Posts and Static Pages

After we’ve made the changes in the header file, we need to apply some modifications to the single.php and page.php files to make their titles more search engine friendly.

Open the default theme’s single.php file and look for this piece of code:

<h2><a href="<?php echo get_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"
title="Permanent Link: <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>

Remember that I’ve told you we are allowed to used <h1> only once per file, for our most important title / phrase. Since we’ve eliminated the use of <h1> on single posts and static pages in the header.php, now, all we have to do is to change <h2> and </h2> with <h1> and </h1>, just like this:

<h1><a href="<?php echo get_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"
title="Permanent Link: <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1>

There you go, now your most important phrase on a single post page is the post’s title, as it should be!
Most themes don’t come with this type of heading importance separation and by following this guide you’ll be able to fix this issue on your own with no trouble at all.

While the default theme does not have a page.php template defined, you could clone the single.php file and rename it. If you don’t clone it, the index.php file will be used to display static pages, which means you’ll list page titles using the <h2> instead of <h1>.

Consider Using Subheadings in Your Posts

For further SEO improvement, you should consider using relevant subheadings inside your post to evidentiate different parts of your post’s structure.
Write down your article and when you’re finished, switch to HTML view and add <h3> & </h3> around you subheadings, like this:

<h3>This Is a Subheading</h3>

Final Thoughts

Usually, titles are the most important links on your blog. Through them, users and spiders alike navigate through your content. Use them smart and effectively.
If you have any questions or need further help with this, feel free to drop a comment.
Also, join me again next Sunday for a new post in the Blog Seo Tips series.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive