There are many different elements on your website that will help increase the ranking of your page and one of these elements is the H1 tag.
For those of you who don't know what H tags are, they are a series of tags that are normally used for headings. For example, the H1 tag is the largest font size and is usually saved for headings of the most importance or headings that you want to stand out. These H tags go right through to H6 and they look like this in your html code:-
<h1>your text goes here</h1>
Let's break this down a little...
The opening bracket or the < lets your browser know that there is a tag coming up. The H1 element tells your browser that the words after this tag should be displayed using the H1 element and the closing bracket or > tells the browser that this is the end of the opening tag.
Then you have your content in the middle of the two tags. This is the content that will be displayed in a H1 tag.
The /h1 tells the browser that the H1 tag is finished and any text after this tag should be styled normally (unless there's a tag telling it otherwise).
Here's a video of my colleague Monte Huebsch about the H1 tag:-
What H tags look like
Please keep in mind that H tags can be styled using CSS, so H tags will look different on every site, but the theory is the same in that the H1 tag is the largest and will go down from there.
This is what a H1 tag looks like
This is what a H2 tag looks like
This is what a H3 tag looks like
This is what a H4 tag looks like
This is what a H5 tag looks like
This is what a H6 tag looks like
Where do I use the H1 tag?
The H1 tag should really be used at the top of your page to give users an overall idea of what your page is about. Don't fall into the trap of adding all your content in a H1 tag thinking that this will make all of it important – this isn't what the H1 tag is designed to do.
The H1 tag will put more emphasis on the content that is within the tag. If this content is relevant to the copy on your page then this will hold more weight in Google. Adding keywords to your heading is also very important.
Now that you know about the H1 tag you can look through your website and make sure you're using it appropriately (but sparingly).