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You probably already know headings are a great way of providing structure to a page visually, but they do so much more – here’s why they’re an essential part of any web page.
Headings make your content accessible
We’ve just topped the Sitemorse INDEX for UK Universities and Higher Education for the second successive quarter, so we know just how important website accessibility is. We need to ensure that every page we create or edit meets the same high standards; and right at the top of any page checklist should be headings.
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This technical structure is particularly important for assistive technologies such as screen readers to read out the structure and provide in-page navigation to the user.
Headings influence your search rankings
The often-forgotten benefit of correctly using headings is that search engines use them to index the structure and content of your web pages; why wouldn’t you go to the effort of adding these correctly in order to improve your search ranking on Google?
Search engines like Google pay the most attention to H1 headings, but they will also look for the other headings within a page. This is why it’s important that your H2s are treated correctly as sub-headings and contain similar keywords to your H1 tag. They should be easily readable, make sense and not be stuffed with keywords, as the likes of Google will recognise this!
What you need to know about headings
Headings go from Heading 1 (H1) all the way down to Heading 6 (H6), the least important heading.
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If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us or book a slot at one of our drop-in sessions which are regularly advertised in InformDerby Daily. You can do both by emailing digitalsupport@derby.ac.uk.
Originally published 21 February 2019