Subheads, Bullets and Numbers – Oh My!

Usually when you’re developing SEO content, you’re thinking about keywords and quality content.  Subheadings, bullets and numbers are in the back of your mind.  However, it is best to learn how these characters affect your site’s search engine optimization.

Subheadings are definitely good—in fact, SEO content developers and webmasters are advised to include them in their paragraphs.  Not only do they help to break up long articles and allow for easy reading, but they are also valuable for keyword repetition.  In fact, many in the industry cite subheadings (as in H1-H6 HTML headings) as a factor in deciding rank.  While not as important as other factors (such as quality, repetition, URL name and so on), it’s hard to imagine proper use of H1-H6 headings being a negative factor.  Over at Famous Bloggers, Ann Smarty states that webmasters should only use one H1 heading per page (the first one) and that all further uses of subheads should be in sequential order.

It’s true that animation and special Java scripts will not be detected by search robots…but the same is not true for bullets.  In fact, search engines pick up on the fact that when keywords appear in bulleted lists it suggests special relevance and emphasis.  Web designers actually prefer using text bullets instead of graphical bullets for the simple fact that they are SEO-compatible.

While there are no hard rules in this instance, SEO specialists claim that HTML <ul> is the superior method of using bullets, since the HTML or “canonical method” actually tells the search engine that this is a special bullet listing.  Alternate methods, such as the “escape method” of creating bullets may only imply decorative text characters.  The only word of caution is to not over do it by adding too many bullets into one page.

Lastly, let’s consider using numbers in SEO.  Does it matter if you simply type numbers or spell out numbers, as in Five Ways to…rather than 5 Ways to…?  Search engines are artificially smart enough to know that 5 is five, so there’s no need to worry about it.  Some users claim that they observe differences in search results, but these are largely anecdotal in nature, as there is no technical reason for such favoritism.

We do know that many marketers prefer using actual numbers rather than number words because they are easier to read and cater to short attention spans.  Some believe that it is more professional to write out numbers for a page title, though search engines don’t seem to discriminate against stories just because they have 10 instead of ten.

Subheads, bullets and numbers…there’s no need to be afraid!