Acceptance of Circumstances, Being Found On Bing, Being Found on Google, competitive advantage, keywords, marketing best practices, organic SEO, Search Engine Optimization, search terms, SEO, website

When You’ve Exhausted Your Starters, Let Your SEO Bench Step In

Anyone who’s interacted with me in a lot in the last five years knows that I’m a huge Boston Celtics fan. I started watching them during the pandemic and while they were playing in the “bubble.” I got hooked pretty quickly, and the rest is history. By the way, I also like the Boston Bruins and the Boston Red Sox , and have enjoyed watching both of the aforementioned teams for many years.

In fact, the Red Sox had my sports heart way before the Celtics did. But, since it’s still 2025 NBA playoff season, and my beloved Celtics recently endured a lot of hardship in the form of injured/ill players (which definitely played a role in their NBA Championship journey ending far sooner than fans hoped or expected), my sports-related analogy will be basketball-related vs. hockey- or baseball-related.

When To Bring In the SEO Back-ups: H2, H3, and Other Sub-headers

Anyone who knows SEO best practices and commonly accepted SEO wisdom knows it just makes good SEO sense to include high-volume keywords and questions in your public-facing website page and post titles, which usually take the form of what’s known as an “H1 header.” An H1 header is the first heading that appears in any website post or page. In the case of this blog post our H1 header is “When You’ve Exhausted Your Starters, Let Your SEO Bench Step In.”

Let’s say you’ve employed the above SEO tactic already, along with these other commonly known and respected SEO best practices, such as:

And, the above aren’t taking your site to where you want and need it to be, i.e., higher up in search-engine results for search terms and questions regularly entered into search engines by target audiences. Maybe, it’s time to give the players who get less play time, more play time! Call them what you will — the bench, the scrubs, the B team, etc. — these non-starters might be exactly what you need to help you score some SEO baskets, including 3 pointers!

This image was taken from Loge seats at a Boston Celtics game and shows the TD North Bank stadium packed with fans, but also the Celtics' players out on the court and the jumbotron.
Last Regular Season Celtics Game At TD Bank Garden, Boston

What Is An H2, H3, H4, etc. Header?

At Results Communications & Research, we like to refer to any headings that are used on a website page or in a blog post and aren’t the first/main header on the page as sub-headers. These are headers that appear below the primary header on the page, tend to be smaller in font size than the main header, are formatted as an H2, H3, H4, etc. header and are often used to break up and/or introduce content — making it easier for both readers and search-engines to consume/absorb the content that appears below the sub-header. The “What Is…” header directly above is formatted as an H3 header, and the “When To” header above that as an H2 header.

As the creator of any blog post or website page content, you will have to decide when to use H2 headers vs. H3 headers, etc. If a sub-header feels more like a sub-header of another sub-header, then it should use a header format that is lower in the header hierarchy (with H1 being 1st in the hierarchy).

Why Use H2, H3, H4 Sub-headers?

The reason to let the sub-headers take a chance at improving SEO game results is because they provide additional and new headings/headers for search engines like Google to crawl. This means they provide more detail and/or more opportunities for you to re-share previous information with search engines so they know what a website post or page is all about and when to serve it up in search results. It’s just one more way to make it easier for search engines to quickly and easily identify and understand when it should serve up a particular website post and page in response to a particular search query.

We’ll Always Bring Our A Team To Any Clients’ SEO Game

Regardless of encouraging you to clear your SEO header bench, we’ll always bring our A team, i.e., our starters, to any SEO discussion or engagement with you, so schedule a complimentary discussion of your marketing challenges and opportunities with us today!