When you begin crafting your marketing material, particularly your content, you want to be sure that you’re creating SEO friendly copy. While the words you use in your content are important in SEO marketing, perhaps even more important are the words you use in your subheading.
What is a Subheading?
In the context of writing for the web, a subheading is a little different than what you might think of if you’re writing something like a term paper.
For the web, a subheading is something that helps break up your content. For example, you could write a piece with a title and nothing else. Your wording may be phenomenal, but what it looks like is a giant block of text.
That’s why web writers use subheadings to break those giant blocks of text into smaller, easier to digest pieces.
In other words, a subheading is something that breaks up you’re writing and explains the content within the paragraphs below it.
If you look at this post, you’ll see that I have written several subheadings, including “What is a Subheading?” and “Why is a Subheading Important?”
Why is a Subheading Important?
This leads to question number two. Why is a subheading important?
Well, for one thing, a subheading makes the text look good. It helps improve the overall readability of your post. Readability is what’s going to draw the reader in and keep them there for, hopefully, a long period of time.
Secondly, a subheading will improve your SEO. Not only does a subheading look bigger and bolder than the other text in your post, but search engine algorithms think subheadings are more critical. Search engines will scan your headings, subheadings, and then your text to determine if your content fits the search criteria.
Ultimately, the most crucial function of a subheading is it’s a flag that you’re waving at search engines, saying, “Look at me. Look at me.”
Marketing Tools 2022 for Subheadings
Because these subheadings are so important, you need to take extra time crafting them. Luckily, there are online marketing tools that will help you do just that.
Google Keyword Planner
One of the best ways to find the keywords you need to include in your post headlines and subheadings is to go to the source. Google.
Since Google is the most powerful search tool to date, it stands to reason that Google is also an excellent tool to help you identify the keywords people are looking for.
When you use Google’s keyword planner, you can see what words or topics people are searching for the most, the least, and in between.
Not only will this give you an idea of the words you want to include in your post headlines and subheadings, but it may also have the added bonus of sparking some content creation ideas.
Google Search
If you’re unsure how to use the Google Keyword Planner, try out the Google Search tool first. Some people just type one or two keywords into Google Search and let the auto-suggest do the rest.
Google will suggest common words other people have included in their searches as options for your search.
For example, when I type “marketing tools” into my Google Search, I receive suggestions like “Marketing tools 2022,” “Marketing tools for nonprofits,” and “Marketing tools online.”
I now know that these are topics that other people want answers to, so I might include something like Marketing Tools 2022 in one of my subheadings.
Answer the Public
Answer the Public is another good tool to help you generate subheadings. Simply type a word or phrase into the system and Answer the Public will generate some of the most commonly used searches surrounding that phrase.
This will give you an idea of what kind of thought process your target audience is going through, and it may also help you generate new ideas for your posts.
You can use Answer the Public twice a day for free. If you’re generating more searches than that, you’ll need to subscribe.
Other Tools
There are many other tools that you can use to generate keywords, and they are all useful. There’s Moz Keyword Explorer or Wordstream’s Free Keyword Tool. You could also try Semrush or Keyword Surfer.
Most of these tools have a free feature to help you choose keywords, but if you want something more in-depth, you’ll need to pay for a subscription.
The good news is that most of the subscriptions come with other important SEO tools besides the keyword generator.
Conclusion
As I explained in a previous blog post, the subheading (or, as I called it then, the subheadline) is an essential piece of content on your website.
Subheadings are important in creating solid pillar posts for your website, which are the foundation on which you build your organic marketing structure.
Make sure you don’t overlook subheadings as you craft your pieces moving forward, and if you haven’t already, go back and build subheadings into previous posts to help boost your website to the front page of Google searches.
Written by Erika Towne