What heading tag to use on sidebars and footers

[kowston]

Hello,

I have some awareness of how to use H1, H2 and H3.
H1 only once per page as the main page heading.
H2's should be subheadings, H3's are sub-sub headings of the and so on. 
This structure gives hierarchy and opportunities to use additional keywords in an order of priority.

I can clearly understand how this would work in an article but what about other content on the page such as global/frequently repeated elements like sidebars and footers?

I see sites - and in particular, I have examed SEO focused sites - that use  H3, H4 and H5 in these instances seemingly giving themselves scope to use at least H2 tags as part of the page content and break out of the structure hierarchy when dealing with sidebars and footers.

I suppose this could signal theses headings are sections of the page that are less relevant than the main article content but that is just an assumption. I don't know what is correct.

[Chris.Menke]

Kerry,

Don't worry about this too much. Putting a lot of thought into heading tags is probably more important to your own development of copy than it is to Google--once you get past the H1 tag, and even that is hardly a noticeable factor. Any well constructed copy is going to have the most important words and concepts at the beginning of the copy and your heading tags just reinforce that.

However, you don't necessarily want to think of lower tier headings as places to put "additional" "keywords". Think of them, maybe, as opportunities to use vocabulary that supports and broadens the concepts of your page's primary terms. I know the web is chock full of landing pages that organize their keywords that way but for the most part, I think that's fruitless for better search results and BORING for the reader.

These subheadings are your opportunity to distinguish your publication from the hoards of others when your audience first skims through your article. Think them through and use them to enhance the reader/user experience first and search engines somewhere after that.

[kowston]

Thank you Chris