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I attached the file. When designing(decorating, styling) h1, h2, and h3 tags for SEO, I am worried. These h tags form a certain hierarchy. For example:

  • h1-h2-h3 (title1 title2 title3)
  • h1-h2-h2 (title1 title2-1 title2-2)
  • h1-h2-h3-h3 (title1 title2 title3-1 title3-2)

Then, if I simply make it bold, it doesn't seem to be easy to read (readability) because there are many subtitles.

So what do you think of numbering next to the title? For example,

    1. title1
    1. title2
    1. title3

Or would it be better to give each title a color for each element? Or would it be better to simply make the h tag's letters bigger and bolder?

Of course, there was a difference between the title and the body of font-family. Assigning a large number to the title seems to be undesirable considering the snippet. This is because the crawler 'automatically' assigns a number or bullet point when selecting a snippet. Is there an error in my opinion?

And Google Help Center didn't allocate a number next to the title. Of course, the customer center is not an absolute standard, but it is for reference.

file1:

enter image description here

google help center:

enter image description here

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    It is almost never a good idea for SEO to base your site on what Google is doing on their own site. Google's own site doesn't need to have good SEO and they often don't follow best practices.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Feb 1, 2021 at 12:45
  • It is very common in to see numbered heading in legal documents. I'm not sure what that says about SEO, but there are tons of numbered headers out there in the wild.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Feb 1, 2021 at 12:46
  • Thanks for the comments. I thought Google values ​​user-friendliness, or readability, and they would set an example. This is because Google will also write with readability in mind.That readability is ultimately directly related to SEO. Of course, Google's writing format is not an absolute standard. I'm still thinking about how to differentiate and organize the titles(headings).
    – fenrir
    Commented Feb 1, 2021 at 17:12
  • This is a design issue and not a SEO one. You shouldn't need numbers to improve readability or SEO. Proper graphic design will easily solve this using indentation, bold and color if it helps but it might not be necessary at all. Using typical document outlining is all you need. Anything beyond that might just be fluff.
    – Rob
    Commented Feb 2, 2021 at 10:27

2 Answers 2

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Contrary to hurting SEO, I've found that placing numbers next to headings can help SEO in some cases.

More specifically, if you have a numbered list of things, sometimes it can qualify your site for the "Numbered List Featured Snippet".

Here's an example of one of those snippets showing for my own site:

list featured snippet showing in Google results

And the markup that it was generated from:

html markup that featured snippet was generated from

So in short, Google is smart enough to recognize numbered headings, and sometimes turn them into a featured snippet, which is of course good for SEO.

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The featured snippet in Google that Maximillian posted is a good example of where I would use numbered headings. Quick how-to guides, recipes, ranking, anything where the order of events actually matters.

In most cases it seems unnecessary with website content (your experience may vary) and it wouldn't make sense for Google to present the headings like that. Don't worry about the Google snippet when deciding though. Think about the content itself. If you're not trying to fool it somehow, the bot won't be confused with either choice.

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