Should Large Paragraphs With Sub-Headings be Broken Up?

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   eugbugposted 5 years ago

   This has probably been discussed exhaustively before, but did we ever come to a conclusion as to whether related information  should be grouped together in a long paragraph with sub-headings, or broken down into lots of short paragraphs with the Five Ws used at the start of titles? Long paragraphs are probably a turn off for readers.

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      theraggededgeposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Always break long paragraphs up into smaller ones. Basically one idea per paragraph; one major idea per subheading.
      
      Each individual paragraph does not necessarily require a subheading.

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      lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      I doubt there's a single rule that applies universally. Whatever best sends the message and is easy to read I would say.

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   eugbugposted 5 years ago

   Sorry, I should have been clearer about this. I meant should long text capsules with sub-headings be broken down into multiple text capsules, so each has a H2 title tag?

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      lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      H1 is your title like a chapter of a book, anything that needs to be a sub-chapter is H2. You can create H2 tags within a single text capsule you don't necessarily have to create a new capsule if you want a H2 tag.

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         eugbugposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         From the point of view of SEO, is it better to use H2 tags rather than sub-headings with H3 tags, or is it that simple and clear cut? On one of my articles, the editor lumped everything into a single text module with H3 sub headings because he considered the content to be related. However since H3 text has a smaller font size, similar to paragraph text, the result looked like one large block, which could put off readers with a limited concentration span.

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            lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            If you were to list down all the points covered by your article on a bullet list with different levels, how would you list it out? That's what you should do with the headings and that's the best for SEO because search engines then better understand the flow of your article.
            
            I do not think the editors have the best understanding of the use of headings for SEO, they do a lot of the content really really well, but sometimes they mess up the heading structure, I work on those again.
            
            H3 headings have a smaller font size but they do stand out. I also use H4 headings in my longer articles.

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