Heading Tag Location Comparison
Through the years, there have been many myths and ideas around content and search engine optimization. Few years back there was an idea swirling that the first visible element of a Web page should be heading level 1(H1) and it would return in favorable search engine positions.
Years ago, this may have been a good idea, but is this still working for Web pages on a landscape where the major search engines are much clever than some years ago?
The original semantic meaning of heading tags is that they define important parts of a Web page text with level one being the most important part and level six the least important part. Using the headings tags correctly, they become an important part of an Html document structure.
The tables below show location of heading tags in comparison to document length with data obtained from two large samples of Web pages.
| Heading Tag Location: General Web Sites | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Observed Element | Observed Category | % Found | Average | Min | Max | Median | 80 Percentile Range | |
| H1 Page Location | General | 51.82 | 12,489.33 | 293.00 | 209,752.00 | 33,331.50 | 1,643.02 - 34,633.13 | |
| H2 Page Location | General | 48.57 | 23,662.41 | 96.00 | 211,960.00 | 37,077.17 | 4,766.37 - 52,519.95 | |
| H3 Page Location | General | 34.83 | 29,150.66 | 780.00 | 321,215.00 | 16,754.50 | 6,140.22 - 62,986.78 | |
| H4 Page Location | General | 17.08 | 30,261.44 | 519.00 | 250,346.00 | 37,906.83 | 7,771.73 - 68,812.95 | |
| H5 Page Location | General | 6.96 | 32,443.13 | 814.00 | 188,401.00 | 40,513.33 | 7,248.38 - 79,524.05 | |
| H6 Page Location | General | 3.78 | 28,209.51 | 1,384.00 | 137,357.00 | 21,265.83 | 8,984.00 - 66,424.07 | |
| HTML Document Length | General | 100.00 | 47,263.73 | 1,096.00 | 336,583.00 | 36,904.00 | 14,109.63 - 90,929.45 | |
| Heading Tag Location: Web Sites in SE Positions | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Observed Element | Observed Category | % Found | Average | Min | Max | Median | 80 Percentile Range | |
| H1 Page Location | Prominent SE Position | 43.18 | 13,714.87 | 227.00 | 86,609.00 | 12,245.43 | 2,057.13 - 33,506.14 | |
| H2 Page Location | Prominent SE Position | 39.68 | 20,008.02 | 1,472.00 | 99,411.00 | 24,460.00 | 3,660.40 - 44,183.90 | |
| H3 Page Location | Prominent SE Position | 30.77 | 22,926.42 | 1,392.00 | 217,571.00 | 26,927.71 | 4,772.30 - 54,420.37 | |
| H4 Page Location | Prominent SE Position | 14.17 | 23,296.07 | 3,335.00 | 110,277.00 | 31,827.71 | 7,283.46 - 48,206.93 | |
| H5 Page Location | Prominent SE Position | 8.65 | 28,097.25 | 918.00 | 113,953.00 | 24,105.86 | 7,602.04 - 60,039.46 | |
| H6 Page Location | Prominent SE Position | 3.92 | 22,260.41 | 640.00 | 48,456.00 | 26,668.14 | 12,580.86 - 33,746.57 | |
| HTML Document Length | Prominent SE Position | 100.00 | 33,975.02 | 1,623.00 | 254,611.00 | 40,464.86 | 7,978.19 - 70,562.84 | |
This data shows that heading level one (H1) is very popular, but Web sites in prominent search engine positions show less frequency than the general category. The location of heading tags are in relation to the level of importance with H6 being the exception which might indicate it is being used as a subheading or as a heading for sections of Web pages.
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