What are Headings Tags and Why are they Important?
Updated: Jun 6, 2022
A Quick Guide On Headings And Why You Need Them For Your Law Firm's Website
You might already be using headings and subheadings to organize parts of your legal blog entries. You avoid posting walls of texts by separating your writings into sections. However, there's so much more to headings than mere bullet points. They can be optimized in different ways to benefit your Lawyer SEO.
1. Organize Text
Headings serve as guiding markers for readers as they go through an article or blog post. They should be able to effectively summarize what a paragraph or section is all about.
Some users might want to skim content to get the gist or theme of an article and see which parts they're interested in. However, when there are no headings in the content, it is much more difficult for your readers to skim it. It's even worse when you follow a heading with a large wall of text.
Remember: Just because the text itself is high-quality, that doesn't mean every single one of your readers will stay. If your blog post is poorly formatted, confusing, and intimidating to read, site visitors might give up and look for something else.
Make sure your headings are informative. While this can be incredibly effective, you can also get it wrong. Remember that headings should highlight important parts of the content, with the primary goal of making the text easier to read and understand.
Headings can also be used to assign the levels of importance for each section of your posts. These headings vary in size (H1, H2, H3, etc.), and their HTML counterpart indicates their hierarchy.
For Example:
If you're writing a guide on Personal Injury Laws, your heading might look like this:
H1: Personal Injury Laws
H2: What Is Personal Injury?
H2: What Are The Common Types?
H3: Car Accident
H3: Motorcycle Accident
H3: Slip And Fall
H2: What Are The Damages I Can Collect?
H3: Economic Damages
H4: Medical Bills
H4: Lost wage
H3: Non-economic Damages
H4: Pain and Suffering
H4: Emotional Distress
H3: Punitive Damages
Do note that the above example isn't a definitive outline you should follow. Use heading tags as you see fit.
Each writer goes about it differently, but make sure you make use of your H2 headings. Users tend to look at them while skimming your content for an idea of what it's about.
2. Improves User Experience (UX)
To be fair, making minor changes to individual headings is unlikely to improve your rankings drastically. However, there are certain (perhaps unintended) advantages.
Giant walls of text, in general, make it harder to read for a lot of people. However, if you organize and write your headings right, you allow your users to skim and jump to parts of the content they need to get to. It also breaks up the walls of text into more digestible portions.
The use of headings results in well-organized text that's easier to read. Better text is better for users, and better text is better for SEO.
Remember: Most users who use search engines do so to fulfill a need. They also want that specific need to be satisfied as quickly as possible.
If users can't find what they need on your page, they'll probably click off and look elsewhere. So, though indirectly, text organization and heading use have an impact on Lawyer SEO.
The number of people who bounce off (those who immediately click away after a few seconds) is picked up by search engines and contributes to your overall ranking stats. When your bounce rate is high, search engines may decide that your website does not provide what users are looking for. As a result, it may negatively affect your chances of boosting your rankings.
Remember: Always prioritize the user when writing headings.
Use them to provide your content structure and direction and explain what each section is about. If your headlines help users grasp what your post is about, they'll also help Google understand it.
3. Make Your Content Accessible
The way you write and structure your headings can provide accessibility. For example, a screen reader can select the headings and read them aloud without the rest of the text. This is because headings are in HTML, so visually impaired users can also skim through your content the same way others use the headings for.
Remember: Accessibility is often great for SEO. It caters to different people. The more people who can easily access your content, the more effective your content marketing strategy will be.
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