Do all-caps headings matter?

The decision to use all capital letters for headings can often lead to a heated argument.

English teachers would want to discuss the rules of grammar, whereas marketers want to focus on grabbing the attention of the reader.

All caps, sentence cases, all lower cases, or title cases... Does it really matter if we use "CUSTOMER FAVORITES", "Customer favorites", "customer favorites", or "Customer Favorites"?

Of course, it's never that simple.

SEO

Some thought that using all caps for their headings would give a signal to Google that this content is more important.

Really, I think this stems from the improper use of HTML.

As long as your headings use the headings tag (h1, h2, h3, etc), Google will understand the heading is a heading.

If you don't use heading tags and instead use all caps as a signal to Google that these are headings, I've got some bad news. Google doesn't care about your use of capitalization.

However, user experience is a factor for SEO.

User Experience

There is a lot of debate on this but some believe that lowercase letters were created to improve readability.

No clue if that is true, but I find it accurate for me in many situations.

Screen readers used by visually impaired visitors may interpret the all-caps title as an acronym. This may cause the screen reader to read out each letter instead of reading the word itself. Not good.

Others may interpret all caps completely differently and think someone is yelling.

I've also heard some folks say that the use of all caps or all lowercase letters is a sign of low quality content.

What about other letter cases

When considering sentence case or title case, this becomes more of a preference.

You should feel free to use sentence or title cases without hesitation.

Both are easy on the eyes and fairly easy to read. They are well accepted and don't evoke the same fears and frustrations as lower and capital case.

Content with a short first heading, then longer subheadings after that, may be ok to use all caps and then title case thereafter.

The Solution

There is a time and place for all capital letters in headings, but all caps are best used in the following situations:

1. You need to shout an important message (e.g. DISCOUNT or PRICE)
2. The title length is short
3. Button texts
4. Icons or product badges with text (e.g. MADE IN USA or VEGAN)

A good non-rule of thumb is that long headings such as those you'd find in a blog post, should avoid all caps.

If you must use all capital or all lowercase letters, consider using CSS to style your headings instead of typing in all caps manually.

text-transform: uppercase;

text-transform: lowercase;

This allows you to easily change your case structure if needed.

From there, as long as you are consistent, you should be good to go.