Headings Tag Analysis: Small Business and Web 2.0
The headings (H1-H6) are Html tags useful to describe Web page content and structure. The heading tag also describes importance with H6 being the least important and H1 being the most important. It is therefore easy to understand why the H1 tag is popular among Web designers whom use it for both structure and content optimization.
Before Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), the first two heading tags were of little appreciation among Web designers and many users did not like them. The reason was the size of the text marked up by H1 and H2. When CSS arrived it was easier to manipulate the size, look and feel of the heading tags and the entire set of sizes got the deserved attention.
The question is does the size and importance of the heading tags reflect how Web designers use them nowadays?
| Table 1: Headings - Web 2.0 | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Observed Element | Observed Category | % Found | Average | Min | Max | Median | 80 Percentile Range | |
| h1 | Web 2.0 Oriented | 58.96 | 2.20 | 1.00 | 41.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 - 4.00 | |
| h2 | Web 2.0 Oriented | 54.75 | 5.33 | 1.00 | 57.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 - 11.00 | |
| h3 | Web 2.0 Oriented | 41.75 | 6.66 | 1.00 | 46.00 | 8.00 | 1.00 - 14.00 | |
| h4 | Web 2.0 Oriented | 21.75 | 5.60 | 1.00 | 71.00 | 5.00 | 1.00 - 7.70 | |
| h5 | Web 2.0 Oriented | 5.26 | 3.53 | 1.00 | 12.00 | 3.00 | 1.00 - 10.80 | |
| h6 | Web 2.0 Oriented | 2.82 | 4.12 | 1.00 | 20.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 - 20.00 | |
Table 1 shows heading tags usage collected from a sample of Web 2.0 oriented Web sites.
| Table 2: Headings - Small Business Web Sites | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Observed Element | Observed Category | % Found | Average | Min | Max | Median | 80 Percentile Range | |
| h1 | Small Business | 52.75 | 2.31 | 1.00 | 36.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 - 3.10 | |
| h2 | Small Business | 46.15 | 5.74 | 1.00 | 31.00 | 16.00 | 1.00 - 14.70 | |
| h3 | Small Business | 34.08 | 6.77 | 1.00 | 57.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 - 12.40 | |
| h4 | Small Business | 21.99 | 5.75 | 1.00 | 12.00 | 6.00 | 1.00 - 11.90 | |
| h5 | Small Business | 15.39 | 2.86 | 1.00 | 7.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 - 6.00 | |
| h6 | Small Business | 6.59 | 4.67 | 1.00 | 13.00 | 5.00 | 1.00 - 13.00 | |
Table 2 shows heading tags usage collected from a sample of small business Web sites that hava a prominent position in search results with major search engines.
Chart 1 shows heading tag comparison of the average number of heading tags on both types of Web sites. The chart shows small business Web sites in prominent position in search engines that use the heading tags use them more frequently. On the other hand the tables show that h1-h3 tags are more likely to be used by Web 2.0 oreiented Web sites.
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