Internet Marketing
SEO GUIDE

Proper Use Of Html Tags

Description: The thought of using html scares a lot of novice webmasters but it is actually quite easy to teach yourself the basic elements of it without too much trouble. You do need to ensure you are using html tags properly however if you don't want to cause yourself any problems.

There are two basic advantages to using html tags properly when you are building or updating your website.

Firstly using the correct tags will ensure the parts of text that you want to stand out properly will do so, making it easier for your site's visitors to find and read what they want. Html tags can change the whole appearance of a page, and while the content is always extremely important, the way you present it will also have an effect on the number of visitors who actually stay on your site - or revisit it in the future.

Secondly search engine robots tend to notice tags when they crawl your site, so if you use them as they should be used then you will be assured that the robots will see the most important information on that page.

If you look at some of the html for an existing web page you will notice that all tags start and end the same way. The start of a tag is denoted by the symbol < while the end of a tag can be recognized as />.

Certain tags are important for laying out your web copy properly, such as:

• <P> and </P> for opening and closing a paragraph
• <B> and </B> for putting a word or words in bold
• <I> and </I> for putting a word or words in italic
• <TITLE> and </TITLE> for setting out the title of each page
• <H> and </H> for putting in a heading in an article

In this sense html tags are actually created in a very simple way and it's easy to recognize where they start and finish. Most tags are also recognizable as being the first letter of the actual command - as in P standing for paragraph and B for bold, for example.

As far as the search engines are concerned, some of them will recognize the headings you use in between the H tags, so make sure you take advantage of using keywords wherever you can in between these tags.

Another type of html that is important for you to use is the meta tag description. The meta tag basically provides the search engine robots that crawl your site with a description of what that particular page is about. To this end you should have a meta tag on every page.

A meta tag in html will look like this:

• <meta name="description" content="YOUR DESCRIPTION" />

Notice the html command begins and ends with the symbols mentioned earlier. All you would do is replace the capitalized letters with an appropriate description of your page. As always, remember your keywords. You should also make sure you are using your meta tags properly. The words you use in your description should always relate to that particular page, so make sure you stay completely on topic if you want your meta tags to help you instead of hinder your progress through the search engine rankings.

Your title tags (mentioned above) are also extremely important. If they are relevant and properly keyworded then these are likely to help you enormously. Make sure you don't use a string of words in your title tags though - no more than ten in most circumstances.

Owing to the way html language is put together, it is actually quite easy to understand and learn what the different tags mean, and most of them are put together in a logical order. For example you will always start your paragraphs with the paragraph tag and if you then need to have a couple of words in bold for some reason the bold tags will wrap around the words you want to put in bold. You then carry on with writing your paragraph as usual.

If you bear the logical side of html in mind, you should quite easily be able to build a competent web page that is easy for your site's visitors to read and appreciate and appeals to the search engine spiders at the same time. There are plenty of sites online which deal with html knowledge in one depth or another; simply pick a beginner's guide to start with and work your way up as and when you want to learn more.