Sometimes in my consulting work I partner with copy writers. Most copy writers are very good at writing, but don’t know a ton about SEO, so they ask me to help them know how to incorporate keywords into their articles. As part of that, here’s a run-down of what the difference between Title, h1, and h2 tags are.
Title, h1 and h2 tags make your article
H1 and h2 tags are, for all intents and purposes, the sub-headings of articles. h1 and h2 are how computers label the sub-headings for the search engine robots, so that the robots know what the article is about in a quick, efficient manner.
So, in a well-constructed article, you have three kinds of ‘tags:’
Title – The title of the article. This should include keywords, but should also be written so that people will find it interesting.
h1 – The first sub-heading. This is often just a repeat of the title, with perhaps a slightly different way of saying it.
h2, h3, h4, etc – The second and subsequent sub-headings. These headings also include the keywords that you are trying to target, but are usually written as a heading to a section of the article. It’s usually not helpful to go beyond an h2 or h3.
You can see an example of what I mean here:
http://www.theabundantartist.com/confidence-key-to-selling-art/
In this article, the title has the word confidence, as do the two sub-titles. If you bring up the page and look at the code (CTRL + U in Firefox), you’ll see the following tags:
<title>Confidence: The Key to Selling Art (or Anything Else) — The Abundant Artist </title>
You’ll notice that this is what shows up at the top of the web browser.
<h1 class="entry-title">Confidence: The Key to Selling Art (or Anything Else)</h1>
This is the title of the article itself, and leaves off the the title of the website. This is the standard practice.
<h2>Confidence Opens Doors</h2>
This is the sub-title about halfway down the article. The word confidence is still there.
You’ll notice that this article shows up #2 in a Google Search “confidence in selling art.” I didn’t do anything with this article besides write some strong title tags – no sneaky SEO tricks, no link-building – just carefully worded title and sub-titles.
Title, h1 and h2 won’t rank for everything
As a side note, I should mention that while Title tags, h1, and h2 tags will help you a lot, they’re just one element of SEO. While that article does rank for “confidence in selling art,” there is very little search volume for a phrase like that. It’s easy to rank for – more competitive terms require a lot more effort.
Hope that helps. Let me know if you have any questions.
