Number of H4 Tags counts the H4 heading elements RankGear finds in a page’s body after script content is stripped. It is a structural count of fourth-level headings, not a measure of their wording or quality — a higher count neither causes nor guarantees a ranking.
| Factor ID | RG-HDG-029 |
|---|---|
| Family | Headings |
| Measurement | Tag count |
| Measured zone | Body HTML without scripts |
What it measures
This factor counts the H4 elements present in the page body once script content has been removed. H4 marks the fourth level of the heading hierarchy — the subsections that sit beneath H3 sections — so the count reflects how much fine-grained outline depth a page uses, not whether that depth is worded well.
How RankGear measures it
RankGear scans the script-free body HTML with its compatibility H4 parser and returns the number of opening-and-closing H4 tag pairs it recognizes. Only complete, well-formed pairs within the bounded body are counted; the parser looks for matched tags rather than inferring headings from styling.
What RankGear looks for
<h4>Subsection heading text</h4>How to optimize it
Use H4 elements for subsections nested beneath H3 sections when the content hierarchy genuinely calls for that depth. Treat the number as an observation of your outline rather than a target to inflate — adding H4s the content doesn’t need distorts the structure without improving it. Where deep nesting is warranted, matched H4 pairs make that structure explicit and countable.
Important considerations
- This is a structural count, not a quality score — it says nothing about how the headings are written.
- Malformed, unusually large, or nonstandard markup may not match the bounded parser, so broken or exotic H4 markup can go uncounted.
- The factor does not evaluate H4 wording.
- Compare against competitors for context, but preserve a logical outline rather than matching a number.
- Correlation is not causation: this count relates to position within a measured result set as a prioritization signal, and does not by itself make a page rank.
Related factors
Part of the Factors reference · how RankGear measures · glossary.