Lesson 6 of 30

HTML Headings

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Headings give a page its structure. They tell the reader — and Google — what each section is about. HTML has six heading levels, from <h1> (the biggest and most important) to <h6> (the smallest).

How to use them

<h1> — the main title of the page. Use it only once per page.
<h2> — the main sections of the page.
<h3> — sub-sections inside an h2 section.
<h4> to <h6> — deeper sub-sections, used rarely.

Think of a book: h1 is the book title, h2 is a chapter, h3 is a section inside the chapter. Skipping levels — for example, jumping from h1 straight to h4 — confuses both readers and search engines.

Headings are not for big text

A common beginner mistake is using a heading tag only to make text big. Headings are about meaning, not size. If you want big text that is not a heading, use CSS to change the font size. Search engines give real weight to headings, so a page with a clear h1, h2, h3 structure ranks better than a page where every line is an h1.

Tip: When you write a blog or a tutorial page, write the headings first — like an outline. Then fill in the paragraphs under each one. Your writing becomes clearer automatically.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Headings</title>
</head>
<body>

<h1>Learn HTML</h1>
<h2>Chapter 1: Basics</h2>
<h3>What is HTML?</h3>
<h4>A smaller heading</h4>
<h5>Even smaller</h5>
<h6>The smallest heading</h6>

</body>
</html>

Output

Output — how it looks in the browser

Try it yourself: copy the code above into a file named test.html, open it in your browser, and change the text to see what happens. That is how you learn — by changing things and watching the result.

HTML Attributes HTML Paragraphs