Document Structure

The document structure refers to the way in which the web page text is layed out. It is not about the colour of text but the way that headings and page content is structured. A good document structure as far as search engines are concerned use mark-up such as <h1> tags for the main headings, <h2> for sub-headings and <h3> for sub, sub headings and so on. As far as search engine crawlers are concerned, a main heading marked-up between <h1> tags has more weight than if it were marked up within <h3> tags. You should add your keywords to these headings where relevant and additional benefit can be obtained by making the <h1> text the same as the first few word of the title text.

For our fictional company, Gibson’s Hydrochloric Acid, the document structure might look something like this:

<h1>Acids and Bases</h1>

<p>introductory text</p>

<h2>The pH Scale</h2>

    <p>content about the  pH scale</p>

<h3>0 < pH < 7: Acidic Regime</h3>

      <p>content about this</p>

<h3>pH 7 – Neutral</h3>

          <p>content about this</p>

<h3>7 > pH >14 Alkaline Regime</h3>

      <p>content about this</p>

<h2>Our Acidic Chemical Products</h2>

<h3>Hydrochloric Acid</h3>

<h3>Sulphuric Acid</h3>

etc…

The main <h1> heading encompasses the content of the whole page, <h2> tags break the structure down to sections of content and <h3> tags emphasis individual items. It is clear to the reader and the search engine what this page is about

A common mistake when using the document structure is to assume that because <h1> contains a lot of weight in the content it should be used for every heading. This approach should be avoided as it will not work. As with most thing in SEO they should be used with common sense.

To really tighten up the document structure to include only those headings which carry keywords you can use the <span> tag which can be formatted to look like a heading using a CSS class but does not take any weight from the document structure of the page.

Viewing the Document Outline

It is quite common to come across sites that have wasted the opportunity to use their keywords in the <h1> heading. You can check your document outline using by using the Web Developers  Firefox extension. This has a handy tool contained within the information tab, View Document Outline. Which will open a new page and show you just the headings and their  respective tags as shown in the screen shot below.

Summary

A proper document structure can make your pages easily readable by visitors that often want to find information quickly without reading the whole page.It will also give the search engines a better idea of what the content is about and so it will stand a better chance of being retrieved for relevant search queries.