June 8, 2007

Typo3 CMS SEO (Part 4): H Tags

Part four of a ten part series: Typo3 SEO

Another search engine ranking factor, considered to be one of the most significant, is the use of H tags as a method of achieving well-organized page content. Most SEO experts agree that frequent use of H-tags can have a positive affect on your rankings – not to mention the benefits of generating well-formed HTML and CSS.

So how do you accomplish this with Typo3? Again, not a problem with Typo3, since Typo3 now comes installed with a built-in Rich Text Editor (RTE) interface for its body content elements, which allows you to easily specify which header tags should be used in your document:

Then, the above Rich Text Editor automatically writes the tags that you specify.

<h1>Online Marketing</h1>
<h2>Search Engine Marketing</h2>
<h3>Search Engine Optimization</h3>
<h4>Keyword Analysis</h4>
<h4>On-page Ranking Factors</h4>
<h4>Inbound Link Development</h4>
<h3>Pay-Per Click Management</h3>
<h3>Paid Inclusion</h3>
<h2>Email Marketing</h2>
<h3>List Management</h3>

Simple as that! And, with the use of custom stylesheets, you can easily generate nice looking headers throughout your site too.

Generating a Custom Content Header Based on Page Title

Although it may not be the best practice to have your H tags too closely aligned to your page titles, there may be cases where this technique comes in handy. For instance, say you wanted to include a header at the top of your content which displays your page title. Here’s how:

In your HTML template, decide on the location of the PAGEHEADER object, and insert the following template tag:

### PAGEHEADER START ###
### PAGEHEADER STOP ###

Then, in your setup, enter the following Typoscript:

# Setup Page
page = PAGE
page.typeNum = 0
page.1 = TEMPLATE
page.1.template = FILE
page.1.template.file = main_template.html
page.1.workOnSubpart = DOCUMENT_BODY
page.1.subparts {

### PAGEHEADER ###
PAGEHEADER = TEXT
PAGEHEADER.insertData = 1
PAGEHEADER.value = {page:title}
PAGEHEADER.wrap = 

}