7 HTML Elements that matters a lot
By Dawie Bester on Nov 4, 2008 in Mentorship, SEO
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When it comes to SEO then there are seven html elements that are very important to search engines. If you are new to html and don’t know what it looks like then just write click on a web page and choose “view source”. Here we will be discussing the seven important html elements:
Title tag
The title tag is probably the most important html element on your web page and counts a lot when it comes to your rankings. It looks like this:
<title>This is your title</title>
When you write your title, then always try to think in terms of a marketing point of view and not just what search engines will see. A title that looks attractive, means that you will get more clicks on your results and that leading to more conversions. Also use your primary keywords at least once and to to place them at the start of the tag for a good prominence.
Meta Keywords
Meta keywords is not that important to search engines anymore like it was a few years ago. The reason for this is because of the amount of sites that tried to spam the search engines with the meta keywords. The meta keywords tag looks like this when you view it in the source code.
<meta name=”keywords” content=”keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3″ />
Although the search engines don’t care much about the meta keywords anymore, it will still be a good idea to include your meta keywords in your html documents. Some search engines still request that sites sites have meta keywords in their html documents. An example of this is ananzi.co.za and if you are promoting a product in South Africa, then you would like to be indexed by this engine.
When you choose your meta keywords then don’t put any keywords in there that isn’t included in your body text as this could result in keyword spamming.
Meta Descriptions
The meta description tag is what most search engines and directories will show under your title in the search result list. If you have not provided a meta description, then the search egnines will make their own description by often taking the first few words on your page or a selection of text where the keyword phrase appears, depending on the search that was done.
Similar to the title tag you need to include the most important key phrases in this tag as well as trying to write it in a marketing point of view.
The meta description looks link this in the source code:
<meta name=”description” content=”brief description of your page or site” />
Body Text
You may have heard this a lot but content is still king and the content of your page comes between the body tags on your html document:
<body>The content that comes in your html document</body>
When writing your content, make sure to put your most important keywords as close to the beginning of the text and the end of the text. Also write your content in terms of how a visitors will ready it as suppose to thinking how a search engine sees it. Having the same keywords repeated in your body text will result in keywords stuffing and you can be penalized for this.
Html Headings H1-H6
Headings are important to visually style the body of your text and result in better user experience on your site. Search engines consider the headings and sub-headings of your page, to be important. Take advantage of this by using H1, H2 and H3 tags instead of graphical headings, especially towards the top of your page. The could help you a lot in terms of your rankings.
The H1 – H6 headings will look like this in the source code:
<H1>Heading 1</H1>
<H2>Heading 2</H2>
<H3>Heading 3</H3>
<H4>Heading 4</H4>
<H5>Heading 5</H5>
<H6>Heading 6</H6>
Link text
The link text is the visible keywords of a link that is pointing to your site from other site (also called outbound links) as well as the keywords pointing in your site (internal links). The most important part of your SEO efforts will be the link text. I’m not going to go to much into links text as that will be a article on its own. But what’s important about the link text is you must have your most important keywords in your link text. This will tell the search engines what your site is about.
The link text looks like this when you view it in the source code:
<a href=”http://www.yoursite.com”>Link text</a>
ALT attributes of your images
When you place images on your site, then always provide the alt text of these images. The reason for this is because it tells the search engines what the image is about and it is just good for your visitors as well. Google often picks up the first ALT text on the page and uses it as the description in the search results, so pay special attention to the ALT text in your first graphic.
The alt text looks like this in the source code:
<img src=”images/header.gif” alt=”A landscape image” / >
Always make sure you have the above html elements in your web pages. Also remember to never stuff any of these elements with your keywords as you will be panelized for this, which means that all your hard work will be down the drain!
