Headlines when used correctly are a SEO factor for search engines to determine page relevance to a search term. It is an important enough factor that Google will use the element that has the role of the main headline as the title in search if the title is not relevant. However, headline tags have been misused, and incorrectly using headline tags will fail.
Headlines for marketing represent the first thing people are going to see and read when visiting a page. In some cases they may be the only thing read by the visitor; Who is deciding if the page has the information they are looking for.
... Using Headlines Correctly ...
A common misuse of headlines has been, and sometimes still is, to try to manipulate the search engines to be relevant to more topics without using additional text on the page, or using the headline tag as a generic text element on the page, putting all text content on the page as headlines, or using headlines as a list element.
This is wrong!
First, there should only be one h1 tag on the page. Although there have been discussions if each article tag can use an h1 tag; The headline tag is a semantic tag for screen readers and ARIA has not endorsed the usage of more than one main headline tag. Although a use case may exist; CSS has been used since Inktomi to discern which headline is the main headline ... size and placement and if the element is being used for the role of a headline, matter for evergreen SEO.
This is also wrong
Google and other search engines may still crawl and index a page with more than one title or h1 tag. The incorrect usage is spotted as soon as the bot attempts to parse the document and should be considered a technical SEO error.
This is correct!
The types of wine are a list. The headline allows the visitor to locate the list on the page by scanning the page. For evergreen SEO the relevant search keyword is "wine selection," and if h1 is the restaurant name, "restaurant wine selection," is the associated search keyword.
Place the main headline above the fold
The above-the-fold information on the page has been important for amplifying the page's topic since Inktomi/Hotbot. Believe it or not before Inktomi added the algorithm results in search often featured pages where the search topic was not visible when the page was loaded.
The first impression a visitor gets when they land on your site is critical. They need to quickly see if the site can help them and decide whether to stay or leave. When people discern the page is not relevant, they believe the search results are poor, making it a pain point for search engines.
The role of a headline is to provide information about the text that follows the headline. The text or lack of should be thought of as a co-factor, merlot is a type of wine, so a wine selection exists. People reading the page will scan for the keyword of interest and read the text for the information if the headline matches their intent.
The role does not depend on the internal tag on the page ... size and placement create the role. Inktomi pioneered using CSS to determine the size and placement of text on the page. That said, there is a crawl budget or investment search engines have to add sites to their index. Using headline tags is the most efficient, and having the search engine invest in fixing incorrect usage of tags isn't optimizing content.
Headlines role in creating a page outline or table of contents
The HTML headline tags were one of the first semantic HTML elements before the term semantic HTML became a thing. They originate in part for accessibility and non-visual browsing of the internet. One of the features provided by headline tags is to create a page outline. The page outline is read by screen readers for those who can not see the page and allows them to navigate to the section on the page that they are interested in.
It is a matter of course the tags are useful for determining what a page is about for search engines and evergreen SEO to include them for page optimization.
Headlines and Long Tail Search
There are several SEO algorithms and SEO tactics that enable a page to be relevant for long-tail searches.
Alternative keywords in headlines
Word proximity alone with word density or frequency
Off-page keyword shaping and supplemental content such as images, PDFs, or download links which are linked to from the page
Having additional keywords in the headlines, (qualified, of course, meaning they are also in the text under the headline), provides an early signal the page is relevant to the long tail.
For the following html snippet ...
The long tails, "merlot wine pairing," "et al" are established once the page is indexed. The supplemental image aids when the image is considered and perhaps OCRed.
Off-page links to the page also shape or aid the page when the page qualifies for the keywords by on-page SEO.
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