Keyword use in H2-H6 headline texts

Overview

Along with the <h1> html tag the <H2>, <H3>, <H4>, <H5> and <H6> are termed heading tags and as such have a great impact on search engine optimisation.

Unlike the <h1> tag there are no real restrictions of use and can be used as many times as makes sense on a page.

As with any search engine optimisation technique if its overdone it may be picked up by search engines like Google as false and you may find your ranking for the page is affected.

History of the <h1> tag

The <h2> to <H6> tag are some of the core HTML tags which have been within HTML pages since day one.

The h tags (excluding h1) are designed to head paragraphs of text and can be used multiple times on a page without any negative impact.

Although the h1 tag is considered the most important and by default is rendered extra large to show its importance, the other tags are also seen to have the same impact but on a smaller scale.

For pages where H1 optimisation can’t completely get the job done, H2 through to H6 optimisation offers a great alternative.

Google places weight on any text in a heading tag as normally this area would summarise the text below and therefore it is reasonable for Google to take this into account while deciding page rank in its index. (SERPS)

As with all signals Google sees as important, this tag has been used to spam in the past and ‘over doing’ the SEO on the h tags can backfire.

Google proof your search engine optimisation for the <h2> to <h6> tags

While it is true that no one outside of Google knows the mechanism for determining rank in its search engine listing, we do know Google likes the top ten pages for a given phrase for a reason, and it is this fact we can use to formulate our strategy.

The reason for looking at the top ten as a whole is that it allows us to remove the ‘freak’ results of any one website.

Optimising the body text for the phrase Kim Kardashian on 17th December 2012 on Google UK

We could look at any phrase but it makes sense to look at a popular term. It’s also important to note that the internet is a fluid place and analysis on one day and with one search engine can be different on another day on another engine.

Looking at the top ten results the following can be seen

Search term: “Kim Kardashian”
Number of keywords: 0 to 13
Keyword density: 0% to 30%

Search term: “Kim”
Number of keywords: 0 to 14
Keyword density: 0% to 15%

Search term: “Kardashian”
Number of keywords: 0 to 14
Keyword density: 0% to 16%

Search term: “Kim Kardashian” , “Kim” or “Kardashian”
Number of keywords: 0 to 27
Keyword density: 0% to 16%

Generally you would look to get as high in the above range as possible without going over the largest figure. If you were to work though the above you would quickly discover if you tried to hit the top of the range for ‘Kim Kardashian’ you may not be able to hit the individual elements within the long tail search term.

In this instance the best way forward would be work out ‘your best fit’, wait for Google to index again and re evaluate that that point.