How to Write the Perfect Heading for SEO

This guide is for bloggers, copywriters and site owners who want headings that help a page rank and get read. You will learn what Google actually says about headings, how to write an H1 and subheadings that match search intent, see before-and-after rewrites, and finish with a checklist you can run on any draft.

What a heading does for SEO

Headings are the HTML elements <h1> to <h6>. They do two jobs at once. For readers, they are the signposts that let someone scan a page and jump to the part they need. For search engines, they show how the page is organised and what each section is about. When Google’s John Mueller was asked about headings, he said Google uses them “to better understand the context of different parts of a page” (Search Engine Land, 2019).

Headings are not a magic ranking lever. Changing an H2 will not lift a weak page. What good headings do is make it obvious that a page covers the questions a searcher has, which helps the page get matched to longer queries, picked for featured snippets, and quoted in AI answers that lift a clean section under a clear heading.

Heading vs title tag

The title tag is what shows in the browser tab and usually becomes the blue link in Google. The H1 is the visible headline on the page. They can be identical, but they do not have to be. Google’s title link documentation says it may use the H1 and other prominent headings when it writes the title link, so if your title and H1 say very different things, Google is more likely to rewrite your result.

How to write the H1

1. State the topic plainly. Match the search intent behind the query: someone who lands from Google should know within a second that this page answers their query. “How to Write Headings for SEO” beats “Words That Work”.
2. Include the main keyword in natural wording. Use the phrase people search, not an awkward exact-match string.
3. Keep it close to the title tag. Same promise, perhaps different words. If the title says “10 examples”, the H1 should not say “5 tips”.
4. Make one H1 the main heading. Google’s position is that multiple H1s are not a problem for its systems; Mueller called them “a fairly common pattern on the web” (Search Engine Land). I still recommend one clear H1 per page because it gives readers, screen readers and Google one unambiguous main topic.

On WordPress, the theme normally prints the post title as the H1, so you should not add another H1 inside the editor. Start your content at H2.

How to write H2 and H3 subheadings

The fastest way I know to get subheadings right is to build them from what searchers actually ask:

1. Search your main query and note the “People also ask” questions, related searches and the subtopics the top results cover.
2. Check your own Search Console data. The queries a page already gets impressions for are often perfect H2s. See the Search Console performance report for how to filter by page.
3. Group the questions into 5 to 8 main sections (H2) and put the narrower points under them (H3). This mirrors how I plan a content brief.
4. Write each heading as the answer’s label. A question heading (“How long should a heading be?”) works well when the section answers that exact question in the first sentence.
5. Answer straight away. Put a direct one or two sentence answer immediately under the heading, then the detail. That is the structure Google tends to lift for featured snippets.

Keep the hierarchy logical

Nest headings by rank: H2 for sections, H3 inside an H2, H4 inside an H3. The W3C accessibility tutorial says skipping ranks “can be confusing and should be avoided where possible”, for example an H2 followed directly by an H4. Google’s Starter Guide is relaxed about this for Search, saying it does not matter if headings are out of order, but notes semantic order is “fantastic for screen readers”. Since 71.6% of screen reader users in WebAIM’s survey start by jumping through headings, a clean outline is worth the two minutes it takes.

How many headings?

Google says there is no ideal amount, and if a page seems to have too many, it probably does. In practice I let the content decide: a new H2 when the topic changes, an H3 when a section has two or more distinct sub-points. A rough sense check is a heading every few hundred words, so readers never face a long wall of text.

Before and after: heading rewrites

These are the patterns I most often rewrite during content audits. The “after” versions say what the section delivers and use the searcher’s own words.

Mistakes I find on real sites

• Headings used for styling. A designer wanted big bold text, so a phone number or a “Free Quote” banner became an H2. Use a CSS class instead.
• Theme widgets in the outline. Sidebar titles like “Recent Posts” and “Categories” output as H2 or H3 on every page, cluttering the structure. Most themes let you change this.
• Logo in an H1. The site name wrapped in an H1 on every URL, so the real topic heading competes with it.
• No H1 at all. Common on page builder layouts where the hero text is a styled paragraph. The HTTP Archive data above shows this is still widespread.
• Duplicate headings across pages. Location pages with identical H2s, apart from the city name, look like templates rather than useful pages. Make each one specific, or merge them.
• Keyword stuffing. Repeating the target phrase in every heading is the most visible form of over-optimisation, and it reads badly.
• Clickbait headings. “You won’t believe step 4” makes the section impossible to understand out of context, which is exactly how AI answers and snippets use it.

How to check your headings

• In the browser: right-click a heading and choose Inspect to see its tag. Browser extensions such as HeadingsMap show the whole outline.
• Across a site: a crawler such as Screaming Frog lists missing, duplicate and multiple H1s and H2s for every URL.
• In WordPress: the block editor’s Document Overview (list view) shows the heading outline, and Yoast or Rank Math warn about missing subheadings.
• On readability: paste a draft into my free readability checker to see whether long sections need breaking up, and use the free text case converter to keep title case or sentence case consistent.

For the HTML side of headings and the other tags that sit around them, see how to use header tags and my guide to HTML and SEO.

SEO heading checklist

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Google Search Central, “SEO Starter Guide” (accessed 2026).
• Search Engine Land, “Multiple H1s won’t get in the way of your SEO, Google says” (2019).
• W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, “Headings” tutorial (accessed 2026).
• WebAIM, “Screen Reader User Survey #10 Results” (2024).
• HTTP Archive, “Web Almanac 2024: SEO chapter” (2024).

If your headings are fine but the page still is not ranking, the problem is usually elsewhere in the content or the site. My on-page optimisation service reviews headings alongside everything else, or you can ask me about a specific page.