When it comes to site design, oftentimes one of the most overlooked aspects of the site is the pieces of which it is made. While there are usually numerous ways to get a certain look for a site, they often have different reflections when it comes to how they are perceived by search engines. One great example of this is the set of header tags.

Header tags (h1, h2 and so forth) are designed to highlight titles and sections in your page, much like different headings are used in a written report, essay or book. You've probably seen them used in this way before, and they help the human eye and brain determine key points and the flow of the writing. They're designed to serve the same purpose in your web pages.

However, the problem often comes when people use header tags for display purposes instead of content organization. For example, someone may want to have all of a certain type of text, like an e-mail address, displayed in a certain style. However, instead of using a proper CSS class for a link tag, they use a header tag because it's easier to write and follow for them. They don't think anything of it because the page displays the way they want.

The problem with this approach is that search engines give these header tags more weight than other text. Therefore, they could have a whole page about their VBS programs, but a search engine may see that page as being more about e-mail addresses than VBS. Therefore, their page isn't identified as relevant to VBS searches, meaning the page is less likely to be visited through a search.

The general lesson here is to use HTML tags for what they are designed for, and this lesson may not be more applicable than when it comes to header tags. Use them to highlight page and section titles, and you'll likely see the benefits when it comes to the search engines.