Using H3 before or instead of an H2...

[genevieveagar]

My designer and I have been having an argument: we have a blog with short, 400 words posts. They have an H1 with nice keywords and a catchy title, and then a few subheadings. I don't like making the subheadings H2, because the font looks way too large in Wordpress, so my designer wants to make them all H4s, so the font looks to be a nicer size.

Here's my problem with that and why I usually just bold the subheadings: Is it really bad to put a bunch of H4s right under an H1, with not H2's or 3's to separate?

I'm reading different arguments on the internet about this and gladly welcome more debate and/or case studies. Thank you!

[Christy-Correll]

I agree with Roman and Donald that it's important for SEO to properly mark up your headings and should be fairly easy to change font size with CSS. It's also important to get your heading markup right so that folks who rely on screen readers and other accessibility devices can navigate your site.

[donsilvernail]

Hi genevieveagar,

So, have your designer make the H2 text smaller. this is a simple css edit or use tiny mce which will give more control over text size. You should be using H2 for main ideas and the keywords in the H2 can help you rank. H3 should be used within the H2 or for less important headings.

Your WordPress default font sizes should not keep you from using your headings properly. It is a very simple fix.

Thanks,

Don Silvernail

[Roman-Delcarmen]

The hierarchy of your headers depends on the hierarchy of your content, so google use that hierarchy to understand the relevance of your content, so please don't change and destroy your content and your opportunities

Heading — HTML has six different heading tags — h1, h2, and so on. The h1 is considered the most important tag, and the h6 is the least important. The tags are often formatted from large (or most important) to smallest (or least important).

Let's take an example, we are going to create an article about
so let's take "buy a MacBook Pro" as the main keyword and here is your structure

Note: this just an example base on my experience

<---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->

H1-All you need to know before to buy a MacBook Pro - Main Keyword Goes Here
Then you add a description or Introduction Paragraph with the main keyword

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation

H2-the best places to buy a Mac Book Pro (Sub-topic secondary keyword or secondary topic) in this case the main topic is "buy a MacBook Pro" and the second topic is "where to buy it online" as you can see there is a direct relation between your H1-tag and your H2-tag

Paragraph related to this subtopic (Here some introductory paragraph)

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation

And then here comes a list of possibles website where you can buy a Mac Book Pro (Again, inside your h2 you put a list of h3-tags that are directly related to the h2)

• H3- Official Website (Paragraph related to this content)
• H3- Amazon Website (Paragraph related to this content)
• H3- Ebay Website (Paragraph related to this content)
• H3- Apple Local Store(Paragraph related to this content)

<---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->

With this example, you can see that every header follow a structure. So if you have a problem with your font-size or font-weight, you just need to add some custom CSS, in fact, is pretty easy for any developer with a few experience ( Example CSS Headings )

_What I'm trying to say with this is, first _you _create a structure for your article this include headers, content, lists, call to actions, images and forms, then try to make a layout (nothing complex) and  in this layout you can play with font-size, line-height or font-weight the easiest way to do that is using the _span- tag, with WordPress is easy to do it.

Why text structure is important for SEO - Yoast Article * How to use headings on your site - Yoast Article* How Links in Headers, Footers, Content, and Navigation Can Impact SEO - Whiteboard Friday