Many authors want a simple and good looking website to post their author bio, books, blog articles, and media kit. And most authors would rather be writing than messing around with setting up a website. Free and inexpensive alternatives like wordpress.com, Wix, and Weebly offer a simple solution to be online without a lot of fuss.

Weebly offers some beautiful themes for authors and a fairly simple construction process for pages and blog articles. However, if you are an author using Weebly, the site lacks one important ranking factor for search engines: the Header 1 tag.

Behind the scenes search engines like Google are looking at your website. H1 tags are important because:

• They are the third most important ranking factor
• They are usually the most visually notable content on a page
• Readers notice H1 tags

Header 1 tags are important to both readers on your page and search engines. Google looks at Header 1 tags as a signal to what your page is about. The tag assures readers that they are in the right place and have found what they wanted.
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<h1> tags are simple HTML you can add to your post and pages on Weebly.
The Title component on Weebly is an <h2> tag which is useful to separate blocks of texts in the rest of your post. These tags are an easy way for readers to skim down the page. In addition, from a user experience (UX) standpoint, they add important white space on the page. White space makes your text easier to read by breaking up passages into chunks.
The easiest way to add your own <h1> tag is to use the embed feature. Scroll down on the left under Basic. The embed code is at the bottom. 

​Slide the embed tag over to the top of your blog (or underneath your blog image). Then open it up to insert your tag. 

​Open Edit Custom HTML. This is where you will insert your <h1> code. ​Now you will need to insert your own HTML tag into the embed editor.

Start with this basic <h1> code and edit to match your Weebly theme. 

<h1 style=”text-align:left;font-size: (pixel size from theme 28, 32, etc.)px; font-face=”Name of Your Theme Header Font”> Header text </h1>

To find your Theme Header font pixel size and name, you need to go into the Weebly editor for your theme.

​Click on Change Fonts. You are not going to change anything in your theme, you are looking for the font name and size to use for your header 1 information.
Once you click on Change Fonts you land on a new page. On the left scroll down to General and click on the Paragraph Titles. 

​Once there you will find the information you need: the name of your font and the pixel size for the header.

Write down the name of the font and the pixel size. Now you can edit the HTML to personalize your Header 1 tag.
Mine looks like this.

<h1 style=”text-align:left;font-size:28px; font-face=”Playfair Display”> Header text </h1>

This is the code you will insert to Edit Custom HTML Save this header code in a text file, or a note keeping app like Evernote or Google Keep. You will use it each time you create a new post.

Go back to the embed segment in Weebly. Click on Edit Custom HTML. This is where you will place the code you have created. Just copy and paste from wherever you stored your code.

Be sure to add the title of the blog replacing the words “header text” with the title of your blog each time.

​Click on the window to embed the code. You’ll see your new Header 1 <h1> tag. Congratulations! 
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Weebly offers two applications to add h1 tags. The free app simply named H1 Tag does a good job but you have to set it each time you use it for font, size, etc. Once you create your own HTML embed code using the instructions here, entering the H1 tag will be quicker than using the app. Your choice: a one time set up, or go through the complete set up each time.
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Weebly offers a premium tag app named SEO Headlines which offers all header tags – h1 through h6. Weebly users have had many problems not only setting up the premium app, but also having the app lose all tags in previous posts. This loss required them to go back and fix all previous posts. Apps should make things easier not create nightmares. I do not recommend this app.

Use the <h1> tag only once at the beginning of your blog article. You need only one <h1> tag per page, otherwise you will confuse search engines. Rather than noticing your page more, the search engine may just rank your page lower because it doesn’t know which <h1> tag is the important one.

Continue to use the Weebly Title for all your subheadings in your blog article. It is an <h2> tag and tells search engines this is a section of your article. These tags help search engines understand the subject of your blog. 

Zara Altair
Author, Argolicus Mysteries. Enter a world in ancient Italy when Roman and Ostrogoth laws made murder a private matter. In a time when murder was not a crime, Argolicus helps solve crimes for individuals when politics and murder collide.