Step 8 – Headings

Last update: February 15 2019

This is probably one of the most important tags to use on your website. In HTML, you can create headings in 6 different sizes. In recent years, the popularity this tag has risen, thanks to the importance of it for ranking in search engines. However, used without the help of CSS, this tag can cause you a headache.

Adding A Heading

Let’s just get to it and add a heading:

<html>
<head>
<title>my own homepage</title>
</head>
<body background="images/background.gif"
bgcolor="#ffffe1" text="#808080" link="#ff9b6A"  vlink="#ff0000">
<font face="Arial">
<H2>A short introduction</H2>
<p>Nora Tol started offering webdesign services since the <u>middle of the 90s</u> with her
first company <i><font color="#ff9b6A">Nora Tol Virtual Publishing</font></i> and, now,
with her second company,
<i><font color="#ff9b6A">ElNorado Productions</font></i></p>
<p><u>By growing demand</u>, she expanded her services with designing logos, hosting,
online marketing and even creating online content.</p>
<p>Take a look at her website for more information.<br /><b><font size="4">Or get in
touch</font></b>.</p>
</font>
</body>
</html>

As you can see, I’ve added the line “<H2>A short introduction</H2>”.

6 Headline Sizes

<H1> is the biggest heading size and <H6> is the smallest. So, the following tags are available: <H1>, <H2> ,<H3>, <H4>, <H5> and <H6>. The tags always need to be closed.

Default White Spaces And Default Sizes

By default, HEADING-elements include white spacing around it. Therefore, you don’t need to use a paragraph-tag (<P>). This additional white space is so undesired, sometimes. You correct it using CSS. The default sizes can also be too much (too big), which you also correct with CSS.

I could’ve placed the HEADING-tag above the first FONT-tag, but my font face would not be used for my heading, then. Because <H2> has its own font size, whichever size you may have given with the FONT-tag will be ignored.

Usage Of Heading-tag And SEO

You’ll be happy to know that information placed within the HEADING-tag is considered more important by search engines. Now, don’t get too enthusiastic and use it for everything. There are a few things to take into account.

Search engines look at the structure of your text, so it only works when you use the HEADING-tag the way it’s intended. For headlines. Also, there’s a strict rule that the <H1>-tag (the biggest heading) is used first and doesn’t get used again, on the same page.

If you do need more headings, on the same page, you use the <H2>-tag or other smaller headings. However, if you use <H1> for your main page title, followed by <H3> for a subtitle and, after, <H2> for another subtitle, search engines can get critical about you using that <H2>. It can’t be avoided sometimes, though – and there are exceptions – but, basically, they prefer a nice, neat structure of importance based on heading size.

Luckily, you are allowed to use <H1> for the main page title, and another size for all following subtitles. Most of us use <H2>.

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