H1 tags in WP themes

[zcx]

In terms of SEO, how important do you consider getting keywords into the H1 tag?

I just ran some of my sites through the Traffic Travis page analysis tool and realized that several of them - all the ones that were using BlueSense theme - were using H1 for the blog title and H2 for the post titles. I switched those sites to another theme that includes the post title in the H1 tag for each page and am curious to see if it has any impact on SERP placement.

Just wondering how important everyone feels the H1 tag is, SEO-wise.

[jasonmorgan]

Here is the basic setup...

For your index page you want H1 for your blog title and H2 for your post titles. For individual pages you want H1 for your post titles.

[Bruce Hearder]

You should "bend over backwards" to get your keywords into H1 tags.

I have found them to be extremely important, only just less important than having your keyword in your page's title (ie in the <TITLE> tag)

Do anything you can to get them in there, BUT.....
Keep the readability of your posts up.. That is very important..

Hope this helps

Bruce

[7_8_shortcuts]

Very good points Bruce. I always put the main keyword in the H1 tag and in the <title> tag, but...

with a little twist...

I usually make my H1 tag *look* less like a headline using CSS but place it at the top of the page above any other text. I might make it smaller in size and even light gray in color. That's because my main keyword on its own may not sound like a great post title, even sound weird to the human reader.

What I do next is I make my post title, which can be longer and catchy headline, *look* like a proper headline as if it was in the H1 tag using CSS again, but if you looked at the code, you would see that it is not inside the H1 tag, but rather H2 tag or sometimes just bold and big font.

This way I make the page relevant for the search engines, showing them what's important and I also serve the human visitors in a better way. This is the template I use.

[dotslash]

Yep agree, extremely beneficial to get your keywords into H1 tags. I have tested this over and over again it does give you a boost.

You can just change font size to make it look less dramatic

<h1 style="font-size:medium">Title</h1>

Neil

[7_8_shortcuts]

Originally Posted by dotslash

You can just change font size to make it look less dramatic

<h1 style="font-size:medium">Title</h1>

Neil

Yes, this how my AdSense templates are constructed.
And it works pretty well :-)