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Written by Lee Roberts March 22, 2007 Markup Standards, SEO and Interpretation> I've checked the W3C site, but can't find> anything about [Hx tags in links influencing > rankings], one way or the other. - Tom Anson (x)HTML standards are a wonderful place to start to learn to practice the art of Web design. Unfortunately, like with the law the practice of the art is often left to interpretation by others. Consider for a moment the right to free speech. Prior to the Bill of Rights, people were cast into the stocks, pillars, jail, and even prison for speaking against the government. Our founding fathers wanted the unjust punishment of forward thinking individuals to be ceased. Nowhere did the Bill of Rights say that a person could do such as was ruled in favor of Larry Flint. However, the right to free speech has been interpreted to allow such behavior. Whether some of us like or dislike that type of material or language is irrelevant; the founding fathers goal was to keep the government from persecuting individuals for their views about government. It was only later interpreted to include such behavior. It may have seemed I was preaching or casting my personal views to a Right we think we have. Your views may be different. The point is the interpretation of this single Right falls into the same realm as the interpretation of (x)HTML standards. How Business Alters Web StandardsWe do have the benefit of the founding fathers of HTML to whom we can pose questions. Or, we can simply review their histories in the industry or ALL information regarding the standards developed for creating Web pages and content.Web standards have been altered to meet the needs of the individuals at hand. Netscape added proprietary codes. Microsoft added proprietary codes. Adobe has added proprietary codes. Google has added proprietary codes. Who's to say who's right? Common sense says who's right, but that common sense is only available after understanding the initial purpose of the Web and how it applies to the question. Heading tags have always been an interesting topic to me. They are confusing to the novice; they are confusing to the "so-called" expert. The (x)HTML standards are confusing in themselves; this is probably why XHTML 2 has proposed the removal of the number for heading tags and allow people to use their own presentations through CSS. The Interesting History of Heading TagsIn the old days, pre-1989, we would publish complete research papers on the ARPAnet and MILnet to use by anyone that knew where to find the research paper. The complete 150-page report would be a single file because we didn't have the benefit of hyper-linking and breaking the document into smaller, more digestible segments. HTML was developed to allow this capability & it wasn't developed to create commerce as many of us might think. However, commerce has benefited from the development of HTML and other Web related protocols and languages.Let's look deeper into the 150-page report. The report would have a title and various headings and sub-headings. That's simple enough to understand, I think. With the smaller, more digestible segments, now called Web pages, each page has or should have a unique page title. From the 30,000-foot view, the page title identifies the topic of the individual Web pages. I think we all know how this piece works; but we might have questions as to what goes into the page titles and theories about that can be addressed at some time in the future. Heading tags, our primary subject for the day, start with the main concept. The main topic is identified by the H1 tag. All content following the H1 tag should support the concept identified by the H1 tag. There can be only one H1 tag per Web page. Some have suggested that the H1 should be used only on the home page. Some have said that the H1 tag can be used multiple times on a Web page. Here interpretation leads us down the wrong path. The (x)HTML standards state that when a heading tag is used the first heading tag must be an H1. This can be found in the following references. "You always need the start and end tags. H1 elements are more important than H2 elements and so on, so that H6 elements define the least important level of headings." "The six heading elements, H1 through H6, denote section headings. Although the order and occurrence of headings is not constrained by the HTML DTD, documents should not skip levels (for example, from H1 to H3), as converting such documents to other representations is often problematic." The following reference indicates that the W3 understands people often lack the full understanding of the standards. "Some people consider skipping heading levels to be bad practice. They accept H1 H2 H1 while they do not accept H1 H3 H1 since the heading level H2 is skipped." However, the idea that heading tags can be skipped or improperly used is corrected by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Accessibility Test for heading tags. As should be apparent from the above references, especially the Accessibility Guidelines, to understand the (x)HTML standards you should examine all information relating to the subject and not just the Document Type Definitions (DTDs). As for using heading tags with links, that is a technical error. The confusion about this evolved from people assuming that an NAMED ANCHOR within the same Web page is the same as a HYPERTEXT REFERENCE (A HREF tags) to another Web page. Headings have been used as NAMED ANCHORS within Web pages in examples found throughout the W3 Web site. The examples clearly show heading tags wrapping NAMED ANCHORS. Heading tags should not be used to wrap HYPERTEXT REFERENCES or ANCHOR TEXT to other Web pages. Heading tags are explicitly used to identify sections within a Web page just as they identify sections within a 150-page report. People scan headings within a Web page to find the information they want just as they do in 150-page reports. Even technical manuals are broken in to chapters that include headings, sub-headings and even more sub-headings. The nested heading structure helps readers find information quickly and easily. Some people are led to believe that wrapping HYPERTEXT REFERENCES with heading tags would lead to higher positions in the search results. Unfortunately, this is not true. The fact of the matter is using heading tags in conjunction with HYPERTEXT REFERENCES to other Web pages has no bearing on the importance of the linked Web page. This is a simple SEO myth like so many other SEO myths. Heading Tags and Search Engine RankingsHeading tags are very important and probably one of the least talked about elements in HTML manuals. I haven't owned one in years. However, if my memory serves me correctly, the section on heading tags was less than a page in length. Clearly even the "experts" that write about heading tags don't know their proper use. There's no wonder why people are so confused by heading tags.As I pointed out earlier, you should have only one H1 tag per page because it identifies the primary topic of the Web page. You can have multiple H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6 tags. However, you cannot have an H3 without a previous H2. Some have been confused by the concept of nesting because clear examples have not been provided. For example, I have seen people use 10 heading tags on a Web page with the last heading tag being an H10. I've no idea how they came up with that idea. Believe it or not, the first time I ran into this was from a "usability" and "accessibility" expert, or so he claimed to be. Are the H3 tags keeping Tom's Web page from moving from page 3 in Google for "Aromatherapy Oil Blends" to page one? That is a distinct possibility. Google does know that the use of heading tags in this manner is not proper. Regards, Lee Roberts Apple Pie Shopping Cart  this post appeared in
LED Digest 2372: HTML Standards and Search RankingsComments (2)
Michael Martinez
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| "Are the H3 tags keeping Tom's Web page from moving from page 3 in Google for "Aromatherapy Oil Blends" to page one? That is a distinct possibility. Google does know that the use of heading tags in this manner is not proper." Absolutely not. As I wrote in the same issue where Lee's comments come from: "> One person who responded to my post... mentioned > to me, as to why my page might not be ranking, is that > I had used three h3 tags in the left-side navigation [links]. - Tom Anson, LED Digest 2371 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1773/55/ Under no circumstances have I ever found a site that wasn't ranking because of use of Hx tags in margin navigation. To a search engine, the Hx tags just say, "These words are being emphasized". It's equivalent to use a STRONG / BOLD or EM / ITALICS markup. W3C validation has absolutely no effect on search engine rankings either, although an alarming number of people have begun suggesting it does in various SEO discussion communities. The W3C 'standard' is an advisory standard only and most people are not even aware of it, much less attempting to adhere to it. A search engine simply cannot afford to score relevance on the basis of HTML markup compliance with arbitrary standards. Your web site ranks well for 'aromatic essentials', but is not well optimized for anything like 'young living essential oils' (let alone 'essential oils'). These keywords appear to be hyperoptimized, in that many sites seem to be relying upon link anchor text to help boost their rankings. Your own internal link navigation doesn't do anything to help you there. Also, the majority of your pages are in Google's Supplemental Results index, and on Google at least that pretty much means they won't do well unless non-Supplemental pages are linking to them." |
bala
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| I have been following and practicing SEO for the last 5 years and found that search engines like google, yahoo, msn gives more importance to the combinations of factors when scoring ranks for pages with similar heading tags. The other factors being appearance of the keyword in URL, body content, anchor links, html validation (without broken links) and content relevancy with optimal keyword density, site authorityness, inbound links quality and neigbourhood factors, age of the page and site, topic relevance to the overall theme of the site, over negative SEO factors like keyword stuffing, excessive linking within and from outside, content duplicacy, automated content pages, paid links schemes, and avoiding google webmaster guidelines. No two pages (and H1 tags) are same in the eyes of the google. BALA Internet Marketing Analyst www.thuriam.net |
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