Since I inundate myself with code on a dailly basis - be it procedural or declarative - it is quite alarming when I realize that many Web designers and developers are still using simple HyperText in error.

One of the prime mistakes I see rather often is the misuse of the hierarchical header tags. These header elements are referenced by the h1 through h6 tags and have the ability to separate your pages content into contextually relevant chunks thereby also giveing your code more linguistic meaning.

Of most importance from a search engine optimization perspective is the h1 tag, which serves as a document's on-page title. The title tag, aptly named, is used rather to supply the document's title in its meta-data. Given the nature of titles, you should only declare one h1 per page.

As headers are hierarchical in behavior, the next header tag you should use after your h1 is an h2. This will target a more contextually specific page division.

When increasing specificity after an h2, use an h3. If you were moving onto the next topic that was more or less within the same scope as your h2 - you would then use another h2 for the next content division.

Think of the proper use of headers as analogous to skimming through a big novel or technical book. You have one title, a few parts, and within those parts you have the chapters. Since Web copy on a given page does not exceed very long lengths (typically), you shouldn't have the need to go past the h3 tag when drafting your markup.

Back to our analogy: book title -> h1; book "parts" -> h2; book chapters -> h3.

I provide a more detailed example of how to properly use HTML headers in "SEO How-To: Using Hierarchical Headers." Also, I discuss header usage outside the scope of Web copy body text (using headers for headlining sidebars, navigation, etc.).

Jeffrey Olchovy is a Web developer, designer and marketing strategist.