Heading Tag Length: Small Business and Web 2.0
When surfing the Web users see certain patterns among similar Web sites. One of the patterns we have seen is that often the title of a Web page is of similar length or the same as the main heading in the content, in particluar H1. We felt it might be interesting to know if it is possible to back our observation by facts or figures.
In two previous posts, we wrote about heading tag usage and location. In this post, we will look at the size of the content of heading tags; the stuff between the opening and closing H1-H6 tags. That is a slightly more difficult operation to undertake than expected since often there is a lot of Html code placed inside the heading tags, but we are interested in the text between the tags not the code many Web designers place inside the heading tag to decorate even though the heading tags are easy to design with CSS.
For analyzing the length of the heading tag we obtained a sample from small business Web sites in prominent positions with the major search engines and Web 2.0 oriented cluster sample.
| Table 1: Heading Length - Web 2.0 | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Observed Element | Observed Category | % Found | Average | Min | Max | Median | 80 Percentile Range | |
| H1 Real Content Length | Web 2.0 Oriented | 58.96 | 45.71 | 3.00 | 508.00 | 35.00 | 10.90 - 86.30 | |
| H2 Real Content Length | Web 2.0 Oriented | 54.75 | 37.31 | 1.00 | 232.00 | 32.00 | 12.00 - 71.30 | |
| H3 Real Content Length | Web 2.0 Oriented | 41.75 | 34.27 | 7.00 | 162.00 | 33.00 | 11.00 - 67.00 | |
| H4 Real Content Length | Web 2.0 Oriented | 21.75 | 40.21 | 9.00 | 385.00 | 18.00 | 12.00 - 71.00 | |
| H5 Real Content Length | Web 2.0 Oriented | 5.26 | 38.27 | 9.00 | 134.00 | 10.00 | 9.00 - 99.20 | |
| H6 Real Content Length | Web 2.0 Oriented | 2.82 | 19.87 | 11.00 | 38.00 | 17.00 | 11.00 - 38.00 | |
| Title Length | Web 2.0 Oriented | 100.00 | 50.68 | 5.00 | 611.00 | 78.00 | 13.60 - 86.00 | |
In table 1 it is interesting to look at the eighty percentire range when comparing the length of H1 heading against the length of title. The average length of the H1 tag and the average length of title length also supports the observation that H1 and title length is very similar.
| Table 2: Heading Length - Small Business | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Observed Element | Observed Category | % Found | Average | Min | Max | Median | 80 Percentile Range | |
| H1 Real Content Length | Small Business | 52.75 | 46.06 | 10.00 | 123.00 | 24.00 | 17.00 - 101.60 | |
| H2 Real Content Length | Small Business | 46.15 | 34.88 | 3.00 | 137.00 | 16.00 | 11.60 - 79.60 | |
| H3 Real Content Length | Small Business | 34.08 | 61.39 | 3.00 | 508.00 | 40.00 | 14.80 - 135.40 | |
| H4 Real Content Length | Small Business | 21.99 | 31.05 | 9.00 | 74.00 | 34.00 | 10.50 - 69.80 | |
| H5 Real Content Length | Small Business | 15.39 | 62.64 | 11.00 | 532.00 | 42.00 | 11.00 - 295.50 | |
| H6 Real Content Length | Small Business | 6.59 | 72.67 | 9.00 | 262.00 | 23.00 | 9.00 - 262.00 | |
| Title Length | Small Business | 100.00 | 57.43 | 5.00 | 145.00 | 36.00 | 25.80 - 97.20 | |
Table 2 shows similar trend as table 1, but differs slightly with the average H3 length being closer to title length, but the eighty percentile range of H1 and the title shows clearly a relationship between the title length and the H1 heading length.
Chart 1 shows the comparison between heading tags of the two samples and the title length.
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