Why You Should Use Headings in Every Blog Post
January 30. 2020
Anyone can write a blog. All you need is a platform, a bit of time, and something to say. But there’s a huge difference between that and running a successful blog. If you want to get your message out there, if you want people to enjoy your content, if you want your blog to earn money, you’ll need to pay some attention to the way you write and format your text as well. And one of the ways to take your blogging to the next level is to use headings in every blog post. But why are headings so important? Let’s take a look!
What are headings in blog posts?
Headings are a type of title or sub-title within a text. They’re usually phrases or short sentences that aim to describe what the upcoming paragraph is about. This gives a longer text better organization and allows readers to focus on the parts that particularly interest them if they don’t want to read the whole thing.
The different types of headings
In WordPress, there are 6 different types of headings, each one smaller and less significant than the previous. So your headings 1 and 2 will be the main titles in a post. Smaller headings underneath those are your subdivisions. This is not to say that heading 6, for example, cannot be useful in your blog post. But it’s headings 1, 2, and 3 that carry the most weight and that are the most immediately visible in the text. There’s some disagreement among WP experts on whether heading 1 or heading 2 should be used as the primary division in a blog post because WP automatically embeds headings 1 in the metadata of the post. However you choose to use headings in your posts, be consistent!
You should use headings in every blog post – here’s why!
The point of running a WP blog is getting your message out there. Whether you’re writing about your business and want people to know more about it or about your own personal life in an attempt to connect to others, it doesn’t matter. You’re writing and publishing for an audience. In order to reach as wide of an audience as possible and make sure they stick around for more posts, you need to consistently have quality content and show improvement. For that purpose, you may use the best WP plugins for blogs, get help from professionals or just do a lot of research. And those will certainly help with the overall success of your blog. But you should use headings in every blog post to easily upgrade the individual text you’re publishing!
Use headings in every blog post to improve your SEO rankings
Search engine optimization is important for every website. If you want people to find your website and read your blog, you’ll need to get as high on Google’s search results as you possibly can. People do all sorts of different things to improve their SEO rankings. This can include keyword research, professional website maintenance, a posting and publishing strategy, and so much more.
One of the easiest things you can do is to use headings in your posts. Google, in particular, uses headings to index the general structure of your content and identify its major themes. Some headings (although not all) should also contain your keyword. This helps search engines identify that keyword as relevant to your content and your content relevant to that keyword which translates to better rankings. Although using or not using headings in any one individual blog post won’t make much of a difference, consistent use of headings in all blog posts can help your search engine optimization.
Headings break up your text into smaller thematic wholes that are easier to consume
Blog posts are usually a relatively long type of online content (between 500 and 1000 words or even more). It’s very easy to lose focus or interest when you have to read that amount of words as nothing more than a wall of text! But that’s not what you want for your readers. You want them to enjoy dynamic and interesting content that keeps them reading all the way through. Headings help with this. They divide your post into smaller sections by theme. These sections are shorter, more to the point and easier to follow and understand than the text as a whole. And who doesn’t like things being made easier and more interesting for them?
You can make your posts more visually interesting and appealing with headings
Similarly, lines of text, no matter how short they are, get pretty boring after a while when all you’re getting is the exact same font and format the entire time. Several things come in handy here, such as changing the text color and size, adding bold and italic parts, breaking up the text with photos or even including links. But headings are also a way of breaking up the monotony of a text! They will easily make the post more visually interesting and engaging. Plus, they draw the eye and make the reader focus on them. So they’re your opportunity to get the most important things across to someone who’s just skimming the post.
Use headings in every blog post to keep your own thoughts organized
Using headings in WP blog posts is not just about the external benefits for the readers and search engine bots. Headings can also be useful to you as a writer. They are a form of text structure that allows you to organize your thoughts and stay on topic. That way you’ll get your message across more clearly and succinctly.
How best to use headings in every blog post
The best way to use headings in every blog post is to think of them as titles to different sections of your post. Break up what you want to say into thematic wholes like you would create chapters in a book and give each of them their own short sub-title. If two sections are related to each other, you can nest them within one another with different types of headings. Then fill the space between the headings with content. Just be careful to have less than 300 words between any two headings. Otherwise, the paragraphs get too long, defeating many of the purposes of headings.