Is heading text (<H1>, <H2>...) important?  

Claim: It is important to have keywords in the text of headings tagged by H1, H2...

Status: Depends

In HTML code, important headings can be marked by tags: <H1>, <H2> <H3> <H4> to denote and subtopics, with the most important, of course being <H1>.

I have seen two equal and opposite assertions regarding these tags: One claim is that they are totally unimportant, while the other claim is that they are important. Both may be true. What I found in examining top 10 listed Web pages is that some pages ranked well without such tags. However if the tags were present, Google, at least, would pay attention to them. For these tags to be effective, the keyword must to appear with the greatest frequency (100% if possible) in the H1 tag, and with lower frequency in lower importance headings. 

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