Fluid flow is measured with a wide variety of instruments. The venturi meter in the diagram on the left shows two columns of a measurement fluid at different heights.  The height of each column of fluid is proportional to the pressure of the fluid. To demonstrate a classical measurement of pressure head, we could hypothetically replace the working fluid with another fluid having different physical properties.
For example, if the original fluid was water and we replaced it with mercury at the same pressure, we would expect to see a rather different value for pressure head. In fact the specific weight of water is 9.8 kN/m and the specific weight of mercury is 133 kN/m. So, for any particular measurement of pressure head, the height of a column of water will be about [133/9.8 = 13.6] 13.6 times taller than a column of mercury would be. So if a water column meter reads "13.6 cm HO", then an equivalent measurement is "1.00 cm Hg".
This example demonstrates why there is some confusion surrounding pressure head and its relationship to pressure. Scientists frequently use columns of water (or mercury) to measure pressure (manometric pressure measurement), since for a given fluid, pressure head is proportional to pressure. Measuring pressure in units of "mm of mercury" or "inches of water" makes sense for instrumentation, but these raw measurements of head must frequently be converted to more convenient pressure units using the equations above to solve for pressure.
In summary pressure head is a measurement of length, which can be converted to the units of pressure (force per unit area), as long as strict attention is paid to the density of the measurement fluid and the local value of g.