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Poll – Heading Tags
By Robert Campbell on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
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After last weeks poll, I won’t even link to it, there is solid proof that content is king. Nobody liked the poll, and I only got six voters. I was one of them. I’m guessing this weeks poll still will not be as popular, but it’s a question that has been getting to me a lot lately. Reviewing site after site, I can only believe that most webmasters or site developers do not know how to use heading tags.
Looking at my top ten list of website mistakes, improper use of heading tags was the number one item listed. Ninety percent of the site owners failed to use heading tags properly. I can only assume this is lack of knowledge because using them correctly has substantial benefits, usability wise, and SEO wise. So this week poll is asking you if you know how. Please be honest!
Here is the poll: Website/Blog Owners! Do you understand how to use heading tags on your site?
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Category: Code, Usability & Design Tags: heading, poll, top ten, usability
Your statement, “failed to use heading tags properly” assumes someone is in authority to declare what is “proper”. This is not true. This is similar to declaring it “proper” to wear a tie in business or corporate settings. These matters are made “proper” or “improper” without reason and therefore are meaningless.
In the case of heading tags, and all html, the issue is practicality. If it works it’s proper. Perhaps one day there will be a law, fines, and imprisonment for coding html “illegally” but not today.
It’s my website and I’ll do what I want.
Hi Diplod, thank you for the post. However I don’t think that is entirely true. You can do whatever you want, and code a site however you want, but heading tags do have a defined purpose as I explained. In fact all HTML tags have been defined with a purpose, and are expected to be used a proper or certain way.
You can go to a business meeting with a tie around head, instead of your neck, but you will look like a slob doing it.
Here is how heading tags were defined back in 1995…
See section 5.4 http://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/html/rfc1866.txt