fingers on keyboard searching for Columbus Oh website design firm

How do you get yourself in front of your prospects - literally at their fingertips - when they're searching online for exactly what you do? SEO. And while that's made of up many things, this blog addresses H1 tags. (The "H" stands for "headline.")

If your company name isn't top of mind for every potential prospect, then you need a Columbus website design firm to help you show up well in Google and other search engines.

For the most part, people come to your website through the homepage. But not always, and we get into that further in this blog. But getting people to your homepage is the basic goal for having a website, since it's one of your main marketing tools.

Getting people to your website happens one of two ways: if they know your company name, they Google that. The other way is, if they DON'T know your company name. And unless you're Nike, Coke or Apple, we're willing to bet there are more people who DON'T know your (or our) company name than do. So how do you get people looking for exactly what it is you do, to your website?

That's what SEO is all about: getting people who DON'T know your name to find you and get on their radar. There's lots of elements of on-site SEO, but this article focuses on one of them: getting the most out of your H1 tag.

What's an H1 tag?

An H1 tag is one of the things on your homepage (and every page) that Google gives a lot of weight to. So it's important to designate the main keyword phrase people would search on Google to fin, as your H1 tag. In the case of our website, that keyword phrase is "Columbus Ohio website design." So the key is to combine both creativity and practicality into your H1 tag.

This is how we worked the keyword phrase "Columbus Ohio website design" into the H1 tag of our homepage:

Columbus Ohio website design firm's homepage H1 tag

There should only be ONE H1 tag per page

One sure way to confuse Google's algorithms is to have multiple H1 tags on any given page of your website. You can read more about the issues about using multiple H1 tags here.

Home pages above-the-fold, and the H1 tags

The term "above-the-fold" means what people see before they scroll. It's taken from the old newspaper term meaning the most important headline you wanted people to see was "above-the-fold."

Obvioulsy, this term was coined when print newspapers were as prominent as online news outlets. Here's a recent - and creative - example (from June 22, 2017) of the importance of what you see "above-the-fold."

front page of German newspaper folded showing Trumps face above-the-fold

Examples of SEO successes

If you’re interested in seeing a few of our SEO successes, you can search these following keywords to see how the websites we built show up in Google.

  • For Mary Shipley Interiors, search the keywords “columbus interior design” and “interior designer columbus”
  • For American Heritage Homes, search the keywords “central ohio home builder” and "columbus home builders"
  • For Rockford Homes, search the keywords “central ohio home builder” and "columbus home builders"
  • For our own website, search the keywords "columbus website design” and "website design columbus”

H1 tags don't HAVE to be the first thing someone sees on your website.

They can be ANYWHERE on the homepage, as long as that keyword phrase is designated as an H1 tag.

Here is what people see, above-the-fold, for Mary Shipley's homepage.

mary shipley website homepage created by Columbus website design firm Sevell.jpg

...and further down the page, is the H1 tag, "Interior design," on the homepage.

Mary Shipley website H1 tag created by Columbus website design firm Sevell

Here is what people see, above-the-fold, for our homepage: there's no H1 tag, or any copy at all, to be seen anywhere above-the-fold, before someone starts scrolling.

Columbus Oh website design firm, Sevell's homepage

...and further down on the homepage, is the H1 tag, which is our most important keyword: Columbus Ohio website design.

Below that is one of our favorite quotes about how people make decisions.

Columbus website design firm homepage H1 tag

Does everyone come into your website on your homepage?

In the first sentence of this blog, we mentioned it's possible some people might not come into your website on your homepage. How does that work? Simple:

Theoretically, every page, or section, of your website is about something different. In our website, we have a section called "Services," and another called "Industries."

Within the "Services" section, are things we do, such as, search engine optimization. That section talks about the difference between SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing).

So it is possible if someone is searching for the phrase "SEO Columbus," or "What is the difference between SEO and SEM?" they might come into our website on that particular page.

Rockford Homes has a section in their website on Columbus condominiums. On that page they have an H1 tag, and many keywords centered around the phrase "Columbus condominiums." So if someone was searching for the phrase "Columbus condominiums." it's possible Google would rank that page of Rockford Homes' website higher than their homepage in their search results. In that  instance, the person searching the phrase "Columbus condominiums" would come into Rockford Home's website on their condominium page.