We get many questions about approximating font size. In particular, do you really need h tags or can you approximate the size of an h tag and get the same SEO benefit? In addition to approximating h tags, there is the idea that text in a larger size will be considered important, irrespective of whether it is associated with any other HTML tags. We will test a few of the ideas that have come in concerning text size. This first test will look at having a giant-sized word on the page.
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I think I have easily received 8 emails about this or people pinging me on Skype or something like that talking about, in particular with htags, do you really need to have an H1 and an H2 or is it really just the size of the text on the page because the idea here is that Google is smart and they know that people can manipulate htags so they are not really looking at the tag, they are looking at the size of the text. In a sense, you can swap out an h1 for just text that is the same size. That is running right now, this first test though is like – oh well, we need to look at first before we go to that is if large text do anything. Is that something that is even being considered just on its own, is the idea. Kind of as we unpack these concepts, can I swap this for that or does this or that work, we often lay a foundation first and kind of see if it works on its own.
That is what we are doing here. We have a giant sized keyword, much larger than the text – significantly larger. That is not an H1, it is just simply a large word that is on the page compared to the other pages – they have normal sized text. In the end, we got no change. There was no impact to the larger text. So obviously, we wanted to run it the other way so now this one has small and these ones had large and again, there was no change. My initial thought in the htags vs size is that no, it needs to be an htag. That is the whole idea. Google is looking at the hierarchy, the semantic order of your tags. This leads me to think that we are going to get the outcome as well. But the initial thought is no, having a giant text like your page is yelling at Google for a particular keyword is not going to bring any extra.