Page Content for SEM

Page Heading

While the page title is the single, most important characteristic to consider when designing web pages, it has one major disadvantage: it does not appear on the web page.  Rather the title appears in the title bar at the very top of the browser.  Because of its location and because few people actually look at the title bar, it is not very useful as a way to introduce visitors to the topic of a web page.  Also, as we noted when we discussed Page Title, while the wording in the page title should make some sense when read, its main purpose is to include the important keywords that relate to a page and, consequently, should not be held to high grammatical or sentence structure standard in same the way information would be held if it appears on a page.

A better option for letting visitors know the topic of a particular web page is to use a descriptive summary in the form of a page heading that is strategically placed on the page and preferably above the page content.  But in addition to helping visitors know what the page is about, the page heading serves as a key consideration for search engines as they index websites. 

A good heading should clearly describe the content of the page, such as describing a website area (e.g., Company History, Corporate Press Releases, etc.), or reflects the title of a content item (e.g., name of article).  When developing headings, it is imperative for the heading to capture the keywords that users are most likely to enter to reach the page and, in this way, it should follow what is in the page title.  (Actually, in practice, this should be the other way around as the page title often is written after the page heading is created).  In this way the page heading serves as additional reinforcement to search engines that a page really is about what the page title says it is about.