Author: Franz Malten Buemann

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This is part one of a series on email design essentials from our resident Art Director and design specialist, Tylor Loposser.

Why email design matters
It’s wise to approach design as an intentional act, an act that shows we are interested in experience and want to create a response to our audience. I think it’s a good idea to break down some of the more specific impacts that design has on your email marketing program:
Great design is a way to stand out in the inbox. 
It’s estimated that the average office worker receives over 120 emails per day! A well-designed email is going to help you break through the noise of the inbox and engage your subscribers. Make your emails enjoyable, your content relevant and take your audience on a journey – so that people can’t wait to interact.  
Design is an extension of your brand.
Your email marketing program should reflect your company’s brand voice. Be sure to use every opportunity, from the subject line to the CTA, to echo your brand’s sentiments. Always look for opportunities to add personality into your copy, this can be done by using a conversational style of writing. 
Consistent and on-brand email design (using colour, logos and layout), reduces the chance of confusing your subscribers, making it easier for them to absorb your key messages. 
Increase your deliverability.
It is worth noting that poor email design can trigger automatic spam filters but more likely, it will lead to your subscribers taking action such as unsubscribing or marking it as spam which can impact your sender reputation. Analytics and insights allow you to keep an eye on how subscribers respond to your messages, so use this data to guide your process.
Increase accessibility with inclusive design.
As a marketer, you want to reach a large and engaged audience. Email design that doesn’t take into account accessibility guidelines which can range from insufficient color contrast, exclusionary language, and poor coding habits will mean that your message isn’t going to resonate/ or perhaps won’t even be available to all your subscribers. 
While accessibility focuses on the structures and containers that hold information, Inclusive Design is based on the information itself, and on your understanding and empathy with your audience. Consider your subscribers’ experiences and abilities, then create emails that reflect that. These connections your draw between what you’ve made and who interacts with it will pay off tenfold.    

Brand consistency
When people first get an email, one of their first reactions is to wonder; “Who is this from?” If this question is left ambiguous, they will unsubscribe, or worse mark it as spam.
The ‘From Mailing Address’ and Subject Lines do a lot of the heavy lifting, but the visuals can have a lot more staying power. Brand recognition allows them to spend more time with the content, and brand consistency increases your resonance with your user. It enables them to picture something specific; opposed to something generic. 
For example; picture coffee. Now picture Starbucks. 
I imagine you are seeing a specific shade of green, those plastic cups, their unique way of labeling their sizes, and that mythical siren, right?
While your industry may be vast, you want to find what elements your brand needs to stick out and be unique.
This is why it’s important to make your emails easily recognizable and build a seamless experience between your email program and your other marketing channels. All of these touchpoints can help to assist in this consistency. Using your logo and any marks to accompany it, plus applying a color story is one of the most effective ways to accomplish this. 
Follow your brand guidelines to keep colors, font styles, tone, and imagery similar. If you don’t have brand guidelines, my recommendation is to make creating them the top of your priority list. 
These don’t need to be complicated design systems. It’s all about building consistency that helps create recognizable experiences throughout all media.  Another great tip; if the goal of your campaign is to drive traffic to your landing pages, your email template should share the same guidelines as your website. Think of your template as the sibling to your website. They don’t need to be identical, just share the same visual language. 

Content hierarchy
Whether you realize it or not, you’ve probably done some of this work during the content creation process. Maybe you’ve established the most important pieces of content and created an inverted pyramid ranking your content from most important to least. Even starting with a headline or hero image that then feeds into a paragraph or body copy is a form of basic content hierarchy, which translates well to email.
These distinctions create visual interest and help to guide your subscribers through a campaign and keep them engaged. This practice can manifest in two different ways:
Typographically
The use of weights/styles/colors within our fonts establishes the way in which people read and rank importance. I suggest a 4px difference between each one of your styles to create a good definition. Also, be sure to assign these styles in your HTML to assist with screen readers. 
To all you Campaign Monitor Drag-and-Droppers; don’t worry, the editor will do this automatically!
Pictographically
This pertains to imagery; primarily photos, illustrations, and icons within your email. 
Photography should be assigned to the most important topic, it’s the most effective way to engage your audience – because people tend to look to other humans for connections. 
On the other hand, using illustrations for secondary messaging can be effective because they often use brighter colors and explore more complex situations. 
While iconography allows you a quick solution by using elemental shapes to create a simple understanding, it’s worth noting that these can be lost in translation.
While your brand may have slightly different standards, designers should combine the qualities of each one of these to tell compelling stories. 
Balancing color with size and layout can help build a clear hierarchy that is immediately recognizable. This creates visual interest and helps with skimming, which we know is a common practice in email. Easily-read copy turns into engagement, which leads to the interaction like clicks, forwards, and shares.
P.S. I know finding good stock images for your emails and getting them embedded can be a time-consuming pain. Check out our Free Image Gallery, which lets you pull from the curated Unsplash library of millions of images and add them straight into your campaigns!

Sections and modules
These are imperative to agile design. The needs for sending email are ever changing, and we need to be able to move quickly. These sections help set expectations for copy and design by having established parameters, allowing you to place content appropriately. 
Sections and modules make testing super easy, you can move these around throughout your campaign and see which ones and in what quantity work best for your audience. 
You can see above some of the most popular options, these naturally set hierarchies allowing you to give the biggest real estate to your most important topics – and as importance or content availability shrinks so does space. There’s an old saying: When you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing. 
There are a few proven layouts that work consistently well for email. We’ve already built out many of them in our premade, high-performing email templates. You can use them any time and simplify your design work. These allow you to spend more time perfecting your content and analyzing your results. 
Wrap up
Design is the foundation of your emails. It has a huge influence on your brand and the overall impact of your campaigns. There’s a lot to consider when approaching email design, from accessibility and inclusion to hierarchy and deliverability. Fortunately, you can make the work streamlined and easy using Campaign Monitor’s prebuilt templates.
Stay tuned for the next part of this series, where I’ll share some of my own creative process and some tips to help you get the most impact out of every email!
 
The post Email Design Fundamentals: Everything You Need to Know (Part 1) appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

  
“He once ran a marathon because it was on his way. Sharks have a week dedicated to him. Mosquitoes refuse to bite him purely out of respect.”
Have you heard of him before? Yes, he’s “The Most Interesting Man in the World”— a fictional character that drinks Dos Equis beer and stars in the company’s viral commercials.
The commercials — which make me laugh every time — are part advertisement, part comedy skit and have a similar theme so fans always know when they’re watching a Dos Equis advertisement.
The company targets its audience of sophisticated beer drinkers in an engaging, creative, and humorous way through TV, social media, and YouTube. The unique campaign created fans around the world that helped spread it across multiple platforms, so much so that people even dress up as the commercial’s main character for Halloween. 
Dos Equis may not have been 100% sure that their campaign would take off the way it did, but they had a good idea about its potential popularity. 
Similarly, there is no guaranteed way to ensure your content goes viral, but there are certain steps you can take to give your marketing campaign the best chance at success.
 
Many marketers hope for a campaign to go viral — meaning it’s recognized, widely-accepted, and influential. But there’s no guaranteed formula. However, if you think about some of your favorite viral marketing campaigns, you’ll notice some common features. Marketers wanting to reach a bigger audience should keep these attributes in mind when creating their next campaign:
1. It appeals to a target audience.
A successful viral marketing campaign considers the target audience. For any campaign to go viral, it needs to resonate with the audience and make them feel so strongly about your content that they decide to share it with their family, friends, and followers.
Determine who your target audience is in the earliest stages of your campaign creation. To achieve this, ask questions such as: Who do I want to connect with? What content would they feel passionate about? What are their hopes, dreams, and values? Why would they care about my campaign? What will can I do to make them want to share my content with their social network?
2. It has a strong visual strategy.
Viral marketing campaigns require a visual strategy — this guides potential customers to understand your brand through the use of images.
A campaign should tell a story and that story is best told using visual elements that resonate with your audience. Your visual strategy needs to be compatible with your brand and target audience — it should be interesting, informative, and contain some element of intrigue, such as humor or hope.
3. It’s highly creative.
Think about your favorite viral marketing campaign. What sets it apart from others?
Marketing campaigns don’t go viral unless they have a unique, interesting, and innovative idea behind them — your campaign needs to be something new and attention-grabbing.
4. It has emotional appeal. 
Have you seen the Dove Real Beauty Sketches campaign? It makes you feel frustrated, insecure, strong, and confident in just a few minutes.
Each commercial shows a person sitting behind a curtain describing their appearance while an artist — who cannot see them — draws their portrait. After the individual is done describing his or her features and the portrait is complete, the curtain is removed. The artist then draws a second portrait of the individual based off what they actually see.
After the second portrait is finished, the artist places the two drawings next to each other. As you can probably imagine, the portrait derived from the individual’s self-description is less attractive than what the artist draws in the second portrait.
In fact, in each video throughout the campaign, the portrait that the artist creates is a much brighter and more realistic depiction of the individual. This is a message about self-esteem and the beauty within all of us.
The campaign went viral because of its relatability and emotional appeal. You need to make your audience feel something — otherwise, why would they want to share your content?
5. It’s easy to share and promote.
Thanks to the internet and social media, sharing and promoting your content with the rest of the world is pretty simple. You don’t need huge sums of money to produce successful photo or video content that can be consumed by the greater population. 
For something to actually go viral, it needs to be shared over and over again. This means you and your company need to share the content first in as many places — and in as many ways — as possible. Then, you need to make it easy for your audience to share it as well.
Enable sharing, embedding, and downloading capabilities on all of your content so your viewers can tag their parents on Facebook, message their best friends on Instagram, or download your video so they can easily turn your content into a memorable GIF. Create calls-to-action or elements that encourage people to send it to their friends. 
Think about asking a celebrity to promote your content if an influencer would fit with your overall message and add value to your campaign. For example, viewers may find your insurance commercial more entertaining and share-worthy if Peyton Manning or Brad Paisley are singing.
6. It’s published at the right time.
You should also consider the date and time that you share your content. Marketers use major holidays — such as Christmas — as well as major events, like the presidential race and the Super Bowl, to their advantage.
More people are scrolling through their social media feeds, watching TV, and keeping up with current events during these times which causes marketers to spend more money on their campaigns. 
Similarly, anyone who uses a platform like Instagram knows what I’m talking about when I say the date and time of your posts matter.
For example, if you post on a Saturday at 8 p.m., most people are out at dinner, seeing a movie, or just hanging out with friends — meaning they are most likely not browsing their newsfeed … at least not as much as they do on Tuesdays. 
After all of this sharing and promoting, you need to wait and see whether or not people latch onto your content. If so, you could have created a viral campaign. If not, you may have to try again.
Read this blog to learn about the reasons why some older campaigns stand the test of time.
The Advantages of Viral Marketing Campaigns
Creating a viral marketing campaign isn’t an easy or predictable achievement. But if your campaign does go viral, it can mean thousands or even millions of new people being introduced to your brand and buying your products — money in the bank!
For example, the Dollar Shave Club’s campaign video went viral, which made them a household name. They were then acquired by Unilever for $1 billion — not bad.
Here are a few more advantages of producing viral content:
1. They can build your brand.
When a marketing campaign goes viral, your audience automatically learns about your company, products, services, and brand. This includes people who may not have ever heard about your company otherwise. This is how some small companies make their “big break” and how large companies stay relevant.
2. They don’t require a large budget.
Some of the most successful viral content is created on a low budget. These days, individuals and companies of any size can film high-quality video and take professional-looking photos all on an iPhone.
Many content creators, or people who simply upload a random video, have found themselves become famous almost overnight. It’s not about the resources and budget — it’s all about what catches the attention of the internet. Marketers don’t always need a large-scale production with a celebrity to make their campaign funny, surprising, relatable, or informational. 
Fun fact:Jonathan Goldsmith, the man behind the “Most Interesting Man in the World” commercials, had only done a few gigs prior getting his big break when the campaign went viral. 
3. They get your brand in front of a new (and larger) audience.
Campaigns are considered “viral” when they have a large reach. Companies may experience an increase in sales, greater engagement on social media, and a boost in conversation about their brand and products.
This is exactly what happened for Smart Water when they brought Jennifer Aniston on board for their campaign in 2012. The video has over 6 million views on YouTube, and their humorous campaigns have done so well with the public that Aniston was featured in them through 2017.

3 of the Most Famous Viral Campaigns
Now that we have reviewed the features of successful viral campaigns and how to launch one yourself, let’s dive into some of the most popular viral campaigns ever created.
Old Spice: “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”
Old Spice found that women are the ones to purchase men’s personal hygiene products, so they created an ad that spoke directly to this audience.
The “Old Spice Man” talks directly to the audience in a bold, confident, and humorous way. He tells women that anything is possible when your man uses Old Spice — all while he sails the ocean shirtless, turns sports tickets into diamonds, and rides a white horse on the beach.

This campaign went viral because … well … humor works. It was so successful that it even increased sales for the brand. The commercial has received over 55 million views on YouTube, won an Emmy for Outstanding Commercial at the Creative Arts Primetime Emmy Awards, and won the Film Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.
ALS: “Ice Bucket Challenge”
The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge began four years ago and was created to raise awareness for the debilitating disease. For the challenge, you had to pour ice cold water over your entire body and then nominate a friend to do the same. This became a movement that raised $115 million in the summer of 2014 alone. Because … who doesn’t want to watch a family member or friend pour freezing cold water on their head?
Celebrities from around the world started participating, challenging their famous friends, donating, and raising awareness. There was an Ice Bucket Challenge hashtag that gained popularity allowing for the videos to spread easily over multiple social media channels.
Most importantly — the challenge is fun and makes participants feel like a part of a bigger movement, which is why it remains relevant years later.
Always “#LikeAGirl”
This video became a major hit because it directly addressed how phrases that are so commonly used can be detrimental to someone’s self image and confidence. In the video, various men, women, and young boys are asked to “run like a girl” or “fight like a girl”. Then young girls are asked to do the same, with a very different approach: They show strength and confidence in their movements. 
It made viewers recognize how quickly we use female-oriented phrases as insults, and that doing something #LikeAGirl should be seen as inspiring and brave. 

The original TV commercial that came out in 2014 has over 65-million views on Youtube, and the hashtag — #LikeAGirl — remains popular today.
For more great examples of viral video marketing campaigns, check out this blog.
Conclusion
There is no roadmap for making your content “go viral.” You can review what has been successful in the past and try to emulate this, but ultimately, it’s about creating great content that connects with your audience and makes them want to share it. Do this, and you just might find that your brand is the one everyone is talking about. 

Ask any professional athlete or business executive how they became successful, and they’ll tell you they mastered a process. By figuring out which of their habits led to success and which didn’t, they improved their efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity at work.
But implementing a process into a business, department, or even a team is a completely different animal than honing your own personal process. With so many moving parts, how do you track each aspect of your business’ process and how do you refine it?
Data flow diagrams provide a straightforward, efficient way for organizations to understand, perfect, and implement new processes or systems. They’re visual representations of your process or system, so they make it easy to understand and prune.
Before we dive into how data flow diagrams can help refine any of your business’ systems or processes, let’s go over what it exactly is.

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DFDs became popular in the 1970s and have maintained their widespread use by being easy to understand. Visually displaying how a process or system works can hold people’s attention and explain complex concepts better than blocks of text can, so DFDs are able to help almost anyone grasp a system’s or process’ logic and functions.
There are two types of DFDs — logical and physical. Logical diagrams display the theoretical process of moving information through a system, like where the data comes from, where it goes, how it changes, and where it ends up.
Physical diagrams show you the practical process of moving information through a system, like how your system’s specific software, hardware, files, employees, and customers influences its flow of information.
You can either use logical or physical diagrams to describe the same flow of information or you can use them in conjunction to understand a process or system on a more granular level. But, before you can use a DFD to understand your system or process’ flow of information, you need to know the standard notations or symbols used to describe it.
Data Flow Diagram Symbols
Data Flow Diagram symbols are standardized notations, like rectangles, circles, arrows, and short-text labels, that describe a system or process’ data flow direction, data inputs, data outputs, data storage points, and its various sub-processes.
There are four common methods of notation used in DFDs: Yourdon & De Marco, Gene & Sarson, SSADM and Unified. All use the same labels and similar shapes to represent the four main elements of a DFD — external entity, process, data store, and data flow.

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External Entity
An external entity, which are also known as terminators, sources, sinks, or actors, are an outside system or process that sends or receives data to and from the diagrammed system. They’re either the sources or destinations of information, so they’re usually placed on the diagram’s edges. External entity symbols are similar across models except for Unified, which uses a stick-figure drawing instead of a rectangle, circle, or square.
Process
Process is a procedure that manipulates the data and its flow by taking incoming data, changing it, and producing an output with it. A process can do this by performing computations and using logic to sort the data, or change its flow of direction. Processes usually start from the top left of the DFD and finish on the bottom right of the diagram.
Data Store
Data stores hold information for later use, like a file of documents that’s waiting to be processed. Data inputs flow through a process and then through a data store while data outputs flow out of a data store and then through a process.
Data Flow
Data flow is the path the system’s information takes from external entities through processes and data stores. With arrows and succinct labels, the DFD can show you the direction of the data flow.
Before you start mapping out data flow diagrams you need to follow four best practices to create a valid DFD.
1. Each process should have at least one input and one output.
2. Each data store should have at least one data flow in and data flow out.
3. A system’s stored data must go through a process.
4. All processes in a DFD must link to another process or data store.
Levels of Data Flow Diagrams
DFDs can range from simple overviews to complex, granular representations of a system or process with multiple levels, starting with level 0. The most common and intuitive DFDs are level 0 DFDs, also called context diagrams. They’re digestible, high-level overviews of the flow of information through a system or process, so almost anyone can understand it.
Level 0: Context Diagram
This DFD level focuses on high-level system processes or functions and the data sources that flow to or from them. Level 0 diagrams are designed to be simple, straightforward overviews of a process or system.
Level 1: Process Decomposition
While level 1 DFDs are still broad overviews of a system or process, they’re also more detailed — they break down the system’s single process node into subprocesses.
Level 2: Deeper Dives
The next level of DFDs dive even deeper into detail by breaking down each level 1 process into granular subprocesses.
Level3: Increasing Complexity
Level 3 and higher-numbered DFDs are uncommon. This is largely due to the amount of detail required, which defeats its original purpose of being easy to understand.
Data Flow Diagram Examples
Professionals in various industries, like software engineering, IT, ecommerce, and product management & design, can use DFDs to better understand, refine, or implement a new system or process.
But what does a data flow diagram look like in practice — and how does it help your business? Here are three examples to help contextualize DFD impact.
1. Level 0 DFD

 
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This Level 0 DFD provides a contextual map of a securities trading platform. Data flows in one direction from the customer service assistant and the broker to the platform, and in two directions from customers to the platform and back again.
2. Level 1 DFD

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This Level 1 DFD breaks down the customer process in more detail, expanding it to include account creation, cash withdrawals, and eventual securities transactions.
3. Level 2 DFD

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This Level 2 DFD decomposes the “Place Order” process to contextualize the steps required to place an order — either by a customer or by a broker. It even accounts for a third-party stock exchange center where transaction details are forwarded after an order is placed.
1. Select a system or process.
Begin by selecting a specific system or process you want to analyze. While any system or process can be turned into a DFD, the larger the process the more complicated the diagram and the more difficult it will be to contextualize. Wherever possible, start with a small function or process you’re looking to improve.
2. Categorize related business activities.
Next, categorize all activities related to this process into external entities, data flows, processes, and data stores.
Consider a restaurant food ordering system. Customers are external entities, the food ordering system is a process, and the interaction between customers and the system (which goes in both directions) is the flow. 
Also worth noting? The ordering system doubles as a data store, so for an SSADA model, this means drawing it as a rectangle with rounded corners with two horizontal lines inside to represent its dual function.
3. Draw a Context DFD.
Now it’s time to start drawing. DFDs can be created by hand, using free templates available online, or via browser extensions.
Begin with a simple, Level 0 DFD: Start with your process or system, then map all basic connections and flows.
4. Check your work.
Before diving into more complex DFDs, check the work you’ve already done to make sure it’s accurate and complete. If you’ve missed (or added) a process, entity, or flow, your next-level DFDs may not make sense and you may be forced to start over.
5. Create child diagrams.
For each process or system described in your Level 0 DFD, create a new child diagram with its own entities and flows. Eventually, you can use these child diagrams to connect processes together. 
6. Expand processes into Level 1 DFDs.
Using your child diagrams, you should map more in-depth connections between each process. In the case of our restaurant example, this could mean digging deeper into the food ordering system and its connection to suppliers, managers, customers, and kitchen staff.
7. Repeat as needed.
Each process — no matter how large or small — can be reimagined as a Level 0 context diagram and the cycle can begin again. Repeat these steps as needed to create as many DFDs as required, or break processes down further to develop Level 2, 3, etc. DFDs.
Perfecting Your Process
While there’s no such thing as a “perfect” data flow diagram, continued practice can help streamline the process and offer critical insight into what’s working, what isn’t and where your business can make improvements that offer the biggest impact.
Your best bet? Remember the rule: Keep it simple. Start with context, build out connected processes, and repeat as needed to map key connections, flows, and entities across your organization.

When I first started blogging, I had no idea how to structure my posts to rank for search engines, or even why it was important.
I just threw in bolded words and phrases that looked good and hoped to be randomly selected for the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Now I know there is a science to blog optimization, and what I was throwing into my blog posts to make them look professional was called header/heading tags — and are an important tool for comprehension and SEO.

Here’s a quick guide on header tags and what they’re used for:

H1 — The title of a post. They’re usually keyword-centric, focused around the “big idea” of a page or post, and crafted to grab a reader’s attention.

H2 — These are subheaders that classify the main points of your paragraphs and separate sections. Consider using semantic keywords related to the “big idea” in your H1 while also helping the reader easily find the sections they want to read.

H3 — These are subsections that clarify the points made in the H2 further. Alternatively, they can be used in formatting lists or bullet points.

H4 —These are subsections that clarify the points made in the H3 further. Alternatively, they can be used in formatting lists or bullet points.

The “H” in H1, H2, etc. officially stands for “heading element,” though the SEO community also commonly calls these tags “header tags.”
As you can guess from the guide above, the numeral indicates the hierarchal relationship between each one (with H1 being the most important, H2 being less important, and so on).
Here’s an example of how this hierarchal structure might manifest in a blog outline:
Now that you understand that header tags provide structure to a page, let’s talk about them with greater specificity, starting with the H1 tag. 
Don’t make the mistake of using header tags as nothing more than stylistic elements. After all, they are structural in nature. Think of the H1 as you would a book title. Usually, there’s only one title for a book, so there should only be one title for your page or post. 
In addition, H1 tags should always be at the top of your page before the rest of your content, just as the book title is on the outside cover before you dive into the text inside.
To illustrate, the header tag in the example below is the title, “The Ultimate Guide to Product Marketing in 2021.”

The title is designated as the H1 for the page using HTML code. This code might manifest in the web page’s source code like so:
See the Pen H1 Example 1 by Christina Perricone (@hubspot) on CodePen.
However, as we alluded to earlier, there are other heading tags that also help with creating the structure of a page.
How many header tags are supported by HTML?
HTML supports up to six header tags (H1-H6) for you to use to structure your page as needed. They can be stylized visually according to your brand, and with the exception of the H1, you can have as many of these tags on a page as you want. 
Your headers should stick to the theme of what you’re writing about because they can help the reader (and the search engines) find the main points within the content and guide them through the flow of the page. When you’re formatting, use your best judgment when breaking up sections.
Below is a screenshot of a HubSpot blog post with examples of header tags indicated with arrows:

As you can see, every header tag looks different visually, and each header tag is used for a new idea.
Now that you know a little more about what header tags are, let’s get into how they’re used for SEO.
Header Tags and SEO You may think that header tags are inconsequential in the grand scheme of website-related things. However, header tags can help provide structure to a piece of content and call attention to the most important ideas, themes, and (in effect) 
keywords in that content. As a result, header tags hold weight with keyword relevancy and readability. 
Consider this: Google finds content to serve up to its users by crawling web pages. As it does so, it analyzes the text, images, and other elements it finds to understand what that page is about.
When you put text into a header tag, you’re signalling that this text is important, and Google will use these to determine the context of the page, which then helps Google serve up results that are relevant to searchers’ queries.
That’s why it’s important when using header tags to make sure they’re correctly matching a keyword intent. If a post’s H1 tag doesn’t have a keyword, or if you put irrelevant text in H2 and H3 tags, Google will have a harder time understanding a page. As a result, that page won’t rank as well as it could. 
To illustrate, let’s say your keyword is “eCommerce.” You’d want this to be reflected in your H1 tag, so a title like “The Guide to Starting an eCommerce Business” would be ideal. That would tell Google exactly how to send web browsers to your post.
Search engines also look at header tags within your post, so it’s good to keep those keyword-centric, as well. For instance, you might create some H2 sections surrounding popular long-tail keywords related to eCommerce, like “five steps for creating an eCommerce business” or “best social media tools for eCommerce.”
You don’t have to think of keywords by yourself, either — in fact, you can do some easy keyword research to help you out or look into keyword research tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs. Just make sure that your header tags are friendly to both humans and the search engine robots.
Headers also make pages easier to read. Sectioning off different parts of a webpage keeps information organized and broken up in a comprehensible way. This helps readers find information they’re looking for but also search engines which are scanning along, too.
If your sections aren’t making sense, your page might not rank. Think of the sections in this post — do you think they were broken up in a readable way?
How to Add Header Tags in HTML
Adding header tags in HTML is a fairly simple process. If you want to notate an H1, you would type in <h1> and </h1>, putting the H1 text in-between those two tags. This is the same method for any type of header tag.
For example, if your h1 was “The Guide to Starting eCommerce,” it would look like this:
See the Pen H1 Example 2 by Christina Perricone (@hubspot) on CodePen.
This will work for HTML4 or older. If you’re working with HTML5, you might have to use a slightly different line to get the same result. The change is to give a heads up to Google about what the H1 is:
See the Pen H1 Example 3 by Christina Perricone (@hubspot) on CodePen.
You can also include punctuation between the two tags. For instance, you might have:
See the Pen H3 Example 1 by Christina Perricone (@hubspot) on CodePen.
Remember, Google will scan the HTML of header tags to tell web browsers what your page is about, so it’s important to look them over and see if your headers in HTML are formatted correctly.
Some blogging platforms, like WordPress and HubSpot, have an option on the toolbar to create header tags, so every time you want to add one, you don’t have to dig into the source code or HTML to do so.

The next time you create a post for your website, see if adding relevant header tags affects SEO, and how your readers are comprehending information.
A good test I like to use is sending posts to a close family member who doesn’t know much about blogging or marketing. Using outsider feedback and asking if they can comprehend my writing before I publish helps me format posts so they’re understandable.
Because using headers can help with readability for your users as well as crawlability for search engines, there’s no reason not to use them when creating pages and posts. You may even see jumps in search engine rankings, traffic, and time on page.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in January 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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