If you want your website to rank, one thing you can’t ignore is the H1 Headline, also known at the H1 Tag.
H1 headlines are the main headlines on a page and are formatted as <h1> in the HTML code (thus the name H1 headline).
H1 headlines are an interesting thing because with them, you have to balance 2 things:
- You have to pay attention to how Google is going to see it for SEO reasons
- You have to pay attention to how people who read it are going to see it, so that you can actually get them to continue reading the page and then eventually contact you or buy from you.
H1 Headlines For SEO
Now, the H1 headline is one of 3 pillars of SEO that I spoke about in my other post. It’s one of the most important things on your whole website for SEO, because Google sees it as the most relevant text on your page.
It’s going to look at the keywords in the H1 headline to determine what the actual page is about.
The first rule is that every single page on your website needs to have a unique H1 headline. DO NOT copy and paste them from one page to another – That’s just going to harm your SEO.
When you’re writing the H1 headline, you want to make sure that it contains the main keywords you want that page to rank for.
If it’s a blog post, and you want for a question keyword, you want to make that phrase the H1 headline. The main thing here is to get the keywords in the headline, but the headline still needs to be readable.
H1 Headlines for Selling
So while the SEO aspect is that you have to get the keywords in the H1 headline, the human aspect is that real people are the ones reading it and it needs to convince them to keep reading.
Also, Google’s algorithm is smart enough to know if the headline is just being stuffed with keywords, or if it’s actually a readable, real H1 headline. So keep that in mind.
Real people are reading this headline, and it’s the first text they’re going to see on the website. So you have to convince them with that headline to keep reading, otherwise, they’ll just leave the page.
This is one of the biggest reasons why you don’t want to just stuff keywords in it. People will just leave, your bounce rate is going to be high, and Google is going to know something is wrong, and they will drop your website.
So you need to use the H1 headline to convince people to keep reading. So how do you do that?
Well, the main way to do that is to give them exactly what they’re looking for.
If you’re running ads, they’re for a particular keyword, and the ad contains a particular keyword, you want to use that same keyword in the headline.
For example, if the ad is talking about personal injury lawyers, you need to include that keyword in the H1 headline as well.
Now, you can also play around with it and make the headline interesting. For example, something like: “Are you looking for a personal injury lawyer in Sydney?” is on topic, contains the keywords but it’s also more interesting that just saying “Personal Injury Lawyer Sydney”.
The point being, you want to make it interesting, and make it stand out from everyone else’s.
How to Get Ideas For Your H1 Headline
One thing you can do is go and take a look at what all the competition is doing. Go to page one on Google, open up all the results, have a look at what they wrote in their headlines to get some ideas.
Take what you find and improve on it, and you’ll have a headline that’s both going to rank as well as stand out from the competition.