Quick experiment:
http://www.worldwar1.co.uk/h-test.html

On this page there are two made up phrases that had zero results in Google, "HMS Sodfish Pie" and "uss mupet flan".

Page is now spidered and indexed by Google and searching for "uss mupet flan", which is just normal text returns the page above.

However searching on "HMS Sodfish Pie", which is in H1 tags returns no results!

So maybe Janeth was correct and Google is ignoring content in H1 tags. Really need more data though so has anybody else experimented with this?

For the page which brought back no results could you now try adding the same phrase in h2 and h3?

Just added a couple of 'unique' phrases using H1/2 so let it cook for a couple of days and see what happens with them.

as far as I always thought of it, you needed to have a keyword in the body and the title for H tags to really affect anything. I may be wrong on this, but it is how we have always done things based on.

Wooh, really?
Can't wait to see how the results turn out, I currently do not use <h> tags...

Thanks dmilford,

It looks like they ignore them if they did not pick up a word that is made up. It may be time to remove <h> tags from my site and my clients sites.

I wouldn't do that Janeth. I certainly looks like the H1 tag is being ignored when there is nothing to back up the phrase anywhere else on the page, but when there is, the H tags may still be very advantagous.

Darren, can you add the 3 words "HMS", "sodfish" and "pie" in the text but not together? Let's see if the individual words cause the H1 tag to be counted before checking them as another instance of the exact phrase.

I was not going to do anything yet PhilC

Hi folks,

I've added (this AM) a couple more pages that are identical to each other with the same unranked rubbish phrase twice each. One page has the phrase once in H1 tags and once in 'normal text whilst the other is the same but without the H1 tags.

Should be interesting to see which ranks higher.

I've also started a test - with a phrase in an H1 tag and its constituent words in the body text. The words are seperated and are the wrong way round in the text.

Tell us how it goes, this is starting to get interesting...

Of course

Just wondering...
How long does it take to do such a test?

It depends on how quickly Google crawls the page. The result of my test should be known quite quickly.

Phil, how long is it now since google last did a proper crawl? Getting v annoyed waiting

Mike

Google is continually crawling. There isn't such a thing as a proper crawl. What is it that you are waiting for?

Back Link Updates, Improved Position in Google.

Getting crawled doesn't necessarily improved your position.
If you want to improve your position you need to make sure your pages are properly optimised and then get loads of links using keyword-rich text

Have been working on this since discovering this website and forum. Using keywords as the anchor text in back links [PhilC: snipped for your site's security]. Working on optimising the site but still learning. We are still slipping down the pages in google. Very few back links are showing on link:www.domain.com However, if I perform allinanchor:search term we do quite well in relation to our competitors.

Mike.

My test result is:-

I have a 2-word phrase (arturial snodpudding) in an H1 tag. Each of the words occurs one more time in the body text but they are not adjacent, and they the wrong way round. The page is now the only result for the exact phrase:-

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&ie ... arch&meta=

I'm starting another test with a unique phrase in an H1 tag, but without putting any of the words anywhere else on the page - to see if I get the same result as Darren.

Just out of interest, the page is #17 for 'H tags' and #3 in the UK results.

Not only did you rank for it but you rank #1 good job

Yeah, well when you're a top SEO like I am, #1 rankings are very easy to get <smug grin>

We are all but meager peasants in your presence Phil.

Yeh he ranked #1 so quickly all the other pages for that SERP ran away

The original test has all terms now showing in Google so H1, H2, H3 and normal text phrases all found. Strang as when the page was originally indexed the H1 phrase was not so some sort of lag there?

Second test of same pages with and without H1 tags has both pages indexed (duplicate filter?) but ranks the page without the H1 tags above the one with just 'normal' text for the phrase!

Darren,

Are you saying that normal text ranks above the <h1> tag ?

These pages are the same apart from the H1 tag on ther first:
http://www.worldwar1.co.uk/t1.html
http://www.worldwar1.co.uk/t2.html

Googleing on the targeted phrase gives:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=hmas+pharey+crumble&btnG=Google+Search
Which returns the page without the H1 tags plus the "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 1 already displayed." google message.

Repeating the search with the omitted results included returns both pages:
http://www.google.com/search?q=hmas+pharey+crumble&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&filter=0
but still the non H1 page is ranked above the identical with H1 tags.

Obviously you should alway be cautious in drawing conclusions from one small test but in this case H1 has come second to 'plain' text.

I wonder where bold text comes in?

It does not look good for <h> tags.

Maybe not, but is it possible that t2.html got indexed before t1.html ?
If so that may be why