Does google look at H3 tags?
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I've had someone tell me that google doesn't pay attention to H3 tags -- only H1 and H2. I haven't found much online to back this up or discredit it; thought I'd ask the Moz community!
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Thank you everyone for your responses. Sorry for the belated reply -- I didn't realize this question had garnered any responses. This is helpful information and thanks again.
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"I've had someone tell me that google doesn't pay attention to H3 tags -- only H1 and H2. "
Pay this person no mind in the future.
The answer given by Nicholas White is perfect.
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Google does look at h tags to understand the structure of the content on the page better, Googler John Mueller confirmed this several years ago. Therefore it’s good practice to have your H1 as a main page or title of the piece then main subheadings as H2, any further sub-headings needed to divide content under these H3-H6. A lot don’t go to this depth and focus on H1 and multiple H2s achieving good results. When I have taken it further I don’t believe it has made a significant impact on rankings compared to when I haven’t.
Hope this helps -
My understanding is they do look at H3 tags and valuate them as being higher emphasis than normal paragraph copy, however, they do not have a much "weight" in the on-page algorithm as the H1 or H2s. If having H3s makes sense for your page's content and helps the user better read and understand the content, I say H3s are positive and I would not hesitate to use them.
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