Weekly SEO news: 7 January 2020
Welcome to the latest issue of our newsletter!

Here are the latest website promotion and Internet marketing tips for you.

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Andre Voget, Johannes Selbach, Axandra CEO

1. How to use heading tags on your web pages (and how to check them)

Although the impact of heading tags has diminished, they are still important for users and search engine optimization. Read this article to learn how to use heading tags on your web pages.

Good headings

1. Use heading tags to structure your web pages

The H1 heading tag on a web page tells the web page visitor what the page is all about. H2 heading tags help you to make your text easier to parse. Your web page content will be much easier to read if you use headings to structure your text.

Many website visitors do not read the whole content of a page. The easier it is to scan the content of your pages, the better your pages will perform. If a page is easy to understand, it's more likely that people will link to it.

2. Use your keywords in your heading tags

It used to be critically important to use your keywords in heading tags on your web pages. Although that's no longer necessary, pages with clearly structured content usually rank better than pages that lack a clear focus.

Keywords in your heading tags help Google to understand that content of your pages. Do not include every possible keyword in your headings. Create readable content that focuses on the most important keywords.

3. Use the right heading tags

Although it's possible to use more than one H1 heading tag on a web page, it's not a best practice to do so. Use the H1 tag for the main heading of your website and then use H2-H6 tags for subsections on your page.

You can use more than one H1 tag on a page, but it's an indicator of bad website design. Use the same heading design on all pages of your website.

4. Interesting headings are...

Get your visitors' attention with compelling headings. If the main heading on a page is boring, visitors might leave your website without reading the page.

Use evocative words and leave some mystery that encourages the reader to wonder what the article will say.

Here's a famous quote by David Ogilvy, known as the "Father of Advertising": "On the average, 5 times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent 80 cents out of your dollar."

How to check the headings on your web pages

The Top 10 Optimizer tool in SEOprofiler analyzes your web page headings and the links that point to your pages. The website audit tool in SEOprofiler automatically checks the heading tags on all pages on your website:

Check your pages now!

2. Internet marketing news of the week

GoogleGoogle: do not link to non-existent pages on your website
 
"Google said on Twitter that they will remove pages from their index if the page URLs show a 404 HTTP status code. Google also said that you should remove any internal links to those pages. Use the website audit tool in SEOprofiler to check if your web pages link to non-existing pages on your website."


Google top stories are chosen by importance scores

"This patent granted in March of 2019 gives us a look at the framework behind the surfacing of these 'top stories' results in what Google refers to as an 'automated news digest.' [...] The news digest system determines a score for each of the news stories that represent the news story’s importance. The news digest system may use an importance score of each of the news stories to determine the score."

John MuellerGoogle: migrate from m-dot domains to responsive design

"Once again, Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that you should migrate away from m-dot domains. He said this several times before. If you still use an m-dot domain (m.example.com) for your mobile web pages, it might be a good idea to redesign your website."


Does getting a Google My Business suspension impact ranking?

"A hard suspension is when Google actually removes the listing completely. [... ]If you receive a hard suspension it’s because Google, or a user, has decided the business is not eligible to be on Google Maps and therefore the listing shouldn’t exist. [...] Based on our findings, when the listing is suspended, it ranks nowhere but when it is reinstated it bounces back to where it was previously."


+++ SEARCH +++ ENGINE +++ NEWS +++ TICKER +++

  • Google: there's no bonus for using a .com domain.
  • Google: AMP is still not a ranking factor.
  • Google: you do not create high-quality content by linking to Wikipedia.
  • Google veterans: The company has become ‘unrecognizable’.
  • New Google snippet for list-based content.
  • Mobile A/B testing: 7 big errors and misconceptions you need to avoid.
  • Google: Maybe we can put the voice search optimization fad to sleep finally.
  • I was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s why I left.
  • Court (barely) allows class action lawsuit over Google's location tracking to move forward.

3. Previous articles