Why Subheadings Matter
Most websites that you visit make rather liberal use of subheadings. You may have found this curious, at least from an SEO perspective. If search engine optimization is about getting keywords on the page, does it really matter where you put them? Wouldn’t it be just as effective if you added a huge block of unbroken text, as long as it had the right keywords?
As you can likely guess, this would not be nearly as effective for many reasons. Let’s take a look at a few of the main ones and the advantages that subheadings provide.
Helping Readers Process Your Content
The first thing to do is to forget about SEO entirely and consider the reader. When a page has subheadings, scanning the text becomes much easier. Readers can quickly get a sense of how long the content is, what topics it addresses, what answers it provides and why they should bother reading it. Many people will not start by reading the actual content, but by scanning the headers to see if the content is even valuable for them.
For instance, imagine that someone is looking for an article on fixing computer speakers. The subheadings can let them know which portion of the content is dedicated to that question. Other sections may contain general information on speakers, specifications, prices and various pieces of information that are relatively useless to someone who just wants to know how to make them work properly. Subheadings are a convenient way to help them find the actual paragraph they want to read.
You Can Use Keywords in Your Subheadings
From a strictly SEO perspective, there are still a lot of advantages. You can use keywords in the subheadings to increase your page ranking and draw traffic. This is an organic and prominent way to set up these keywords. It helps you increase your SEO standings by adding these useful keywords, but you do it in a way that doesn’t feel stuffy and contrived.
Another advantage is that subheadings can increase your dwell times and decrease your bounce rates, two statistics that help determine the value of your page for search engines. A site with a giant block of text will appear confusing and intimidating to the reader, who will quickly bounce back to the search results to find something easier to use — even if the answer to their question was technically on your page. If you provide subheadings, they stay longer to read them and they are more likely to dig deeper into your content afterward.
Content That Works
At Content Customs, we spend our time developing content that works on numerous levels. Subheadings are just part of this overall picture. If you’re looking for elite SEO services that get results, do not hesitate to get in touch with us today.