Should I use my keyword in header tags?
Yoast sure wants me to!
And god knows, I want that red light to turn green SO BADLY.
But the real question is: Does it actually matter what you do with your header tags (from an SEO perspective)?
The answer is: Yes…but not in the way you think.
I’ll explain.
What is a header tag?
Let’s first get our bearings around what a header tag is.
Headers tags, also known as H1-H6 tags, are headings used to separate concepts within an article. They are listed in order of importance and size, with H1 being the largest header, and H6 being the smallest header.
In early days of SEO it was effective to use your target keyword in your header tags as often as possible (keyword stuffing). Back in those days Google only knew what a page was about based on what you told it in your metadata, like in header tags.
As you can probably imagine, this resulted in lots of SEOs figuring out how to game the system and stuff their keywords into headers every chance they got.
But Google doesn’t need you to ram your target keyword down it’s throat anymore. If you’ve done a good job writing your content, Google will understand the meaning of your page.
So, should I focus on using my target keyword in header tags?
Verdict:Probably not.
There’s more effective things you can do with header tags from an SEO perspective.
How should I use header tags, then?
In short, you should use them to organize your thoughts and concepts you want to convey in a way that makes it easy for the reader to follow.
You almost need to forget that you’re writing for SEO in order to effectively write for SEO.
But, there should be a method to the madness.
By organizing your headers by subtopics you can help Google understand the structure and organization of your content.
If you’re using an SEO content writing tool like Clearscope or MarketMuse, this concept is super simple. All you need to do is take the suggested topics that you need to cover and turn them into mini paragraphs, using the topic as the subject of the header.
For example, if I was trying to write a blog post for the keyword “How to do keyword research”, I would pull up the list of topics I need to discuss.
I would then convert these “topics” into paragraphs, using the topic within the header.
So I would convert “Google trends” into an H2 tag that read “Using Google Trends for keyword research.”
I would then write a paragraph (or however much content I needed to write to properly explain the topic) based on that prompt.
By doing this, I’ve done three things:
- I’ve clearly communicated to Google the structure of my page.
- I’ve clearly communicated to Google the subtopics I’ve covered for my target keyword.
- I’ve broken up my content into well-organized topics for my readers.
The result is extremely thorough, well-organized content that comes across as unforced and natural.
And as an added bonus, Google may understand the structure of your page enough to give you a sexy looking snippet with shortlinks. Check out MailChimp’s result for “how to do keyword research.” Notice that it’s pulling the header tag directly into the SERP:
Conclusion
So should you use header tags for SEO? Most certainly yes. But most certainly not in the way we used them in the days of old school SEO. Use them very strategically to organize the subtopics you’re trying to discuss and you’ll satisfy both Google and your readers.