The purpose of search engine optimization is to get traffic to your pages, but your site must be written and formatted for those who visit.
Your headlines serve both purposes. The visual formatting makes the headlines stand out to your visitors. The designation of some text as a headline (using "heading tags") makes it stand out to Google and other search engines. For both, the headlines make it immediately obvious what topics are covered on your page.
How to make a headline
Headline levels, defined using "heading tags," can be numbered from 1 to 6, with 1 being the most important in terms of indexing.
For best results, place the main topic of your page in "heading 1" tags, and the subtopics in "heading 2" tags. If you care about Google showing the page, use words in the headlines that your visitors are likely to search for. For example, a headline such as About Our Company informs your human visitors what is to follow, but a headline that says you are a company "serving the needs of North Texans needing ambulatory and wheelchair transport" is more informative, and certainly helped Preston Trail Transport to reach the first page of Google. Notice how it tells what they do, and where they do it.
If you use our Online Business Partner® service, just log in and open your page, click in the relevant text, and click to set the heading in the tool bar. Otherwise, contact your webmaster with your instructions.
The bottom line: Optimize your pages with well-written content that uses important keyword phrasing in the headlines. It is one of the easiest ways to improve your search engine results.