As a WordPress user, employing proper heading hierarchy in your content might be a challenge you’ve come across or something you never considered. In this article, we’ll explore this concept, explaining why it’s essential, its impact on usability and accessibility, and how to correctly apply it in WordPress.

Understanding Heading Hierarchy

Heading hierarchy refers to the structure and order of the ‘H’ tags in HTML, ranging from H1 (highest level) to H6 (lowest level). Each tag signifies a different degree of importance within your content. The H1 tag is typically the main title or heading, while the H2 to H6 tags serve as subheadings, breaking your content into more digestible sections.

The Impact of Heading Hierarchy on Usability and Accessibility

Correctly implementing heading hierarchy in your WordPress content significantly enhances usability and accessibility.

1. Content Structure: Correct heading hierarchy provides your content with a logical and clear structure. This structure guides readers through your content, breaking it down into readable and coherent sections.
2. SEO: Search engines use headings to index the structure and content of web pages. Proper heading hierarchy aids search engines in better understanding your content, potentially boosting your ranking in search results.
3. Accessibility: Heading hierarchy is crucial for users who rely on screen readers. These assistive technologies use headings to navigate content. Correctly implementing heading hierarchy makes your website more accessible to users with visual impairments.

Styled Text vs. True Headings

It’s important to differentiate between styled text and actual headings. While you can style text to look like a heading by making it larger or bolder, it doesn’t inherently become a heading in the HTML sense. From an accessibility and SEO perspective, headings are recognized by their proper use of heading tags (H1-H6) in HTML.

Assistive technologies and search engines use heading tags to understand and navigate content. Visually styled text without the appropriate heading tag won’t be recognized as a heading, impacting both accessibility and SEO performance. Therefore, for content structure, accessibility, and SEO, use actual heading in accordance with your content hierarchy.

Choosing the Right Heading Level

Determining which heading level to use depends on the structure and hierarchy of your content. Here are a few general rules to help guide your decision:

1. H1 Tag: Use the H1 tag for your main title. This should represent the overall content of your page. There should typically be only one H1 tag per page.
2. H2 Tags: These serve as main subheadings and should represent the main points or topics under your H1 tag.
3. H3 to H6 Tags: Use these tags for additional, nested subsections under your H2 tags. For example, if you have a point to make under an H2 tag that requires further subdivision, you would use an H3 tag. Similarly, if that point needs to be further subdivided, use an H4 tag, and so on.
4. Avoid Skipping Heading Levels: Skipping heading levels can confuse your readers and users of assistive technologies. It disrupts the content hierarchy and can make it more challenging to follow the structure of your page. For instance, avoid jumping from an H2 to an H4 tag without an H3 tag in between.

Remember, the goal of these headings is to establish hierarchy and structure, not to control the size or look of the text. That should be done with CSS styling.

Implementing Correct Heading Hierarchy in WordPress

WordPress makes it simple to use the correct heading hierarchy, though it requires careful consideration of your content’s structure.

1. H1 Tag – Main Heading: The H1 tag should denote the main title of your page or post. It should encapsulate the main topic or theme of your content. WordPress automatically sets your page or post title as the H1 tag, so you generally don’t need to add this manually.
2. H2 Tags – Main Subheadings: H2 tags serve as the primary subheadings of your content. They should accurately reflect the content that follows them. These tags aid in subdividing the main theme into more specific sections.
3. H3 to H6 Tags – Additional Division: The remaining heading tags (H3 to H6) can further segment your content. These headings are typically used to break down the content within your H2 tags. They are less commonly used than H1 and H2 but can be crucial in more detailed or lengthy content.

A Note on WordPress Blocks

The Gutenberg editor in WordPress simplifies the process of applying heading tags. When adding a new block, select ‘Heading’, then choose the appropriate level from the dropdown menu in the block toolbar. This visual approach to structuring your content can simplify the use of heading hierarchy.

Conclusion

Using the right heading hierarchy in your WordPress content is crucial for usability and accessibility. It provides a clear structure, enhances SEO, and improves accessibility for visually impaired users. By paying a bit more attention to your headings, you can significantly improve the effectiveness of your WordPress site. Remember, it’s not just about the visual structure, but also about creating a clear information hierarchy that assistive technologies can recognize and navigate.

Use of the term “faculty profile” can be confusing because there have been multiple solutions to hosting faculty profiles over the years. Right now at S&T, referring to someone’s “faculty profile” could mean one of three things.

Your Elsevier profile

Your primary “faculty profile,” and what most people mean when they say “faculty profile,” is housed in a system called Elsevier Pure. You can find these profiles by going to people.mst.edu and clicking “Faculty Profiles.”

Every faculty member should automatically have a profile in this system; however, they are not limited to just the automatically created information. You can also provide updates and edit the profiles yourself.

University Libraries (library@mst.edu) provides support for this system and content updates. If you’d like to change anything about your profile or get access to edit it, contact the library.

Your S&T Sites website

Your website here at S&T Sites can also act as a faculty profile of sorts. S&T Sites offers a faculty template to help you showcase your research, teaching, and other scholarly activity. Creating a site on S&T Sites is useful if you have more information to share than would comfortably fit inside the more formulaic style of your Elsevier profile. You can also link to your S&T Sites website from your Elsevier profile to help visitors find your full website.

S&T Sites is a self-service site creator, so you can create a new faculty profile site by clicking “Create a site” at sites.mst.edu. To edit it you can either return to sites.mst.edu and click “Sign in,” or you can type your site’s address followed by /wp-admin, like https://sites.mst.edu/example/wp-admin. S&T Sites runs on WordPress, which powers around half of all websites on the internet. Training material is abundant, but we recommend starting with BlueHost’s series of videos. For a quick introduction, also see our post on Moving to S&T Sites.

If you’d like someone else to assist in creating your site, you can also assign other users editing rights.

Your department’s faculty listing

The last place you may have a profile is on your department’s faculty page. This is usually a short photo and contact info section that may have a bio included. These profiles are hosted in a content management system called TerminalFour, and are edited by your department’s TerminalFour content author. If you’re not familiar with who edits TerminalFour pages for your department, reach out to websupport@mst.edu and they can get you in contact with the right person.

You may have noticed that your new site doesn’t show up very well in Google search results yet. This is because search results are the result of an ongoing “ranking” process that takes time, sometimes months or years. The speed at which your site moves up through the ranks of existing, longer-established results is influenced by a wide variety of factors.

The good news is that by having your site on S&T Sites, you’re already ahead of the game to rise through the ranks quickly. Search engines prioritize sites that are quick to load, delivered securely, responsive to mobile devices, and on reputable domains. By hosting on S&T Sites and using the available range of templates, these boxes are checked automatically.

There is more you can do to ensure your content rises quickly, though!

Use headings to divide your content

First, make good use of headings. They’re handy for breaking up your content into clear sections. Your page’s title will already be an H1, so use H2 headings for main sections of content and H3 headings for subtopics. This helps readers follow along and gives search engines a better idea of what’s on your page.

Carefully choose and use keywords

Next, focus on the search terms you want to target. Choose a relevant keyword for your content and make sure it appears in your title, the first line, and at least one subheading. But be careful not to overuse it – that could harm more than help if you look like a spammer. The goal is balance.

Keep content easy to read

Make sure your content is easy to understand. Clear, easy-to-read content is also easy for search crawlers to categorize and rank. Tools like Flesch-Kinkaid readability calculators can help you keep things simple. Just remember not to oversimplify to the point where your content loses its unique style and feel.

Use descriptive image metadata

If you’re using images, don’t forget to fill out their metadata with helpful details. Giving your images clear titles and descriptions can improve their accessibility and give search engines more info to work with.

Link to trusted websites

Where it makes sense, include links to respected, high-ranking sites. Linking to well-known .org, .edu, and .gov sites can boost the credibility of your own content, helping to improve its ranking.

Remember: Search rankings change

Optimizing for search engines can be tricky because search algorithms often change without notice. The best way to rank highly regardless of changes is to consistently create valuable, well-structured content that’s valuable to your readers. This content will naturally attract more visitors, which can improve your page ranking over time.

In conclusion, keep in mind that your search ranking is a long game. By making sure your content is well-structured, useful, and search-friendly, you’ll be setting yourself up for long-term success in your online journey. Stick with these tips and watch your webpage’s Google ranking improve over time.