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Also, does it work with both <b>/<i> and <strong>/<emphasis>?
And does anyone have any real evidence that this actually has an impact? If so, could you please be more specific?
Re: <h1> and it's counterparts are what the SEs are looking for. Emphasis with a style sheet doesn't count.
There have been a number of discussions regarding the weight of these elements to the SERPs. Is there a definitive study - probably not as each person's results are subjective and dependent upon many other factors.
2.3 Other FeaturesAside from PageRank and the use of anchor text, Google has several other features. First, it has location information for all hits and so it makes extensive use of proximity in search. Second, Google keeps track of some visual presentation details such as font size of words. Words in a larger or bolder font are weighted higher than other words.
I had previously believed that both bold and italic were given extra weight, checking the authority reveals that only bold (and larger font) is given weight.
Several notes: This paper is old in a rapidly evolving world. I would assume that the developers realized fully well that <strong> and <b>, while conceptually distinct, are similar enough to be treated similarily. As far as we know currently Google ignores CSS.
Based on comments on WW over the last few weeks, I went in and added <H1> tags on every page.
I did this with an expectation that it will help the site.
Any ideas what type of benefits I can expect to see?
My sites have pretty nice SE positioning even before I added the <H1> tags. On the pages, I use metatags (although I don't really put much emphasis in that area), title tags, use of bold/italics, alt tags (although not a lot).
Should I see much from the addition of the <H1> tags? or will it just be a subtle addition to the mix?
The really dramatic effect is when you start from a site with no titles (or worthless ones) and no H1 and add both. On a site which has good titles and uses bold I suspect that the effect of adding H1 will be more subtle (but definitely worthwhile).
I thought the default size of the <H1> tags was a little small, so I added <font size=16>.
I think that will really make the text POP.
Hehehe...
I thought the default size of the <H1> tags was a little small, so I added <font size=16>.
This is where CSS lets you take advantage of these HTML tags while keeping your site decent looking.
I did just the opposite on a few of my sites. I knocked the font size down on h1, h2, and h3. Now I use them all without worrying about the standard effects they have, but hopefully getting whatever bonus they will give.
I thought the default size of the <H1> tags was a little small, so I added <font size=16>.
I think <font size=32> is a lot more attractive. Though you're just joking, we might as well mention here that it's probably not a good idea to use a font size attribute within an <hx> heading. It could send conflicting signals to the engines.
CSS is the way to go, and for the present it seems OK. I've seen CSS controlled <h2> headings on the Microsoft site, whatever that means.... I've got to believe, though, as CSS is becoming more common, the engines are trying to devise some way of looking at how text formatting is used.
I've always tried to keep the "headingness" of any <hx> headings... ie, even if reduce them in size with CSS, I keep them slightly larger than the text that follows, and also bold or slightly bold.
I also feel that headings work best if the text that follows them contains your target terms too.
