Add / Edit Headings

Do you want to add or edit a heading (aka title) on your WordPress website? This page shows you how to do this using the default WordPress block editor.

Headings on website are more commonly referred to as ‘Headers’ and since the dawn of the internet there have been six standard headers available to use, these being h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 and h6. H1 is the largest and most important, they decrease in size to h6:

It is important for SEO (search engine optimization) and just general layout that these are used in the correct order, giving the page the correct structure. Often people choose a header based on how it looks rather than its function – don’t make this mistake!

The h1 tag

An h1 tag should always be used first, and only once on a page. WordPress makes this an easy one as what you enter as the page title automatically becomes the h1 header:

Ordering of h2-h6

Consider each a subheader, an h2 is a sub-heading of h1, h5 a subheader of h4, etc.

• The first header used after the h1 must be an h2.
• A header can follow a header of the same size (except h1)
• if using a smaller header (smaller being a higher number) they must be used sequentially.
• if using a large header you can jump up to any size (except h1)

So our page can have sections that have headings of h1 – h2 – h2 – h3 – h4 – h2 but never h1 – h2 – h5 – h3.

Adding a Header

Click on the add block plus sign, either in the page editor or in the block list on the left, and select ‘Heading’:

You will then be able to type in your heading:

Note the floating box above which gives us some basic tools for the heading. One allows us to choose which header we want to use:

Another allows us to choose the alignment of the heading:

The chain icon allows us to make the heading a link – more details on how to use this can be found on the link page.

Under the three dot icon on the right is the delete option:

The styling applied to the headers (font, color, sizes) are defined in your WordPress theme styles that are used throughout your website. However some controls can be found in the controls for the block found on the right hand side of the edit page: