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Best Practices in Applying Header and Text Styles

Synopsis: Using headers and other formatting appropriately makes your content easier to read and helps search engines rank your site.

Using Header Tags

What are headers?

Header tags are pieces of HTML code that format text, making it easier for your visitors to scan the content on a Web page. It helps them understand a page’s organization and know what information is most important. In addition, many search engines use header tags to determine how a site ranks in search results because the words that you have chosen to appear in larger text is often important to the page’s content. Therefore, it is important to use header tags appropriately, consistently, and only to relevant content.

Strategies for using headers effectively

There are three standard header styles:

  • Section Heading
  • Sub-Section Heading, and
  • Sub-Sub-Section Heading
Use these styles to structure and arrange content on your site. As a best practice, apply the Section Heading style to headers first, then arrange sub-sections underneath with the Sub-Section Heading style. If there are sections to organize within a sub-section, apply the Sub-Sub-Section Heading style to those headers.

It is important to remember that headers should not be used within regular text to highlight or emphasize a word or phrase. Other styles, such as bold or italics, should be used for this purpose. (See Formatting Text, below.)

How to use header tags
  1. Click the "Site map" button from the main menu and navigate to locate the page on which you want to apply headers, and click “Modify this Web page.” (Or, if you are creating a new page, click “New content.”
  2. Highlight the appropriate text.


  3. On the editor toolbar, click on the drop-down menu next to “Format.” Select the header style you want to apply.


  4. The text you highlighted now displays according to the header style you selected.

  5. Repeat the steps above to apply additional header styles. When you are finished, click “Save Changes” (if you edited a document) or “Publish” (if you created a new document).

Formatting Text

You may want to format text in your page without using a header tag. For example, if you want to emphasize a word or phrase that appears within your regular content, you can do so by making that text appear in a bold or italicized typeface. Note: UIS recommends not using underline to emphasize text because underlined text typically indicates a hyperlink.

How to format text
  1. Click the "Site map" button from the main menu and navigate to locate the page on which you want to apply headers, and click “Modify this Web page.” (Or, if you are creating a new page, click “New content.”
  2. Highlight the appropriate text.


  3. On the editor toolbar, click on the icon for either bold or italic. You may select one after the other, to create text that is both bold and italicized.


  4. The text you highlighted will now display according to the formatting style(s) you applied.


  5. Repeat the steps above to apply additional header styles. When you are finished, click “Save Changes” (if you edited a document) or “Publish” (if you created a new document).

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