Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML for short, is a standardized system used across most websites and website creator applications. The system’s 30th birthday is this year, and its creators have innovated in many ways to fix its weaknesses and improve its strengths. Many websites are made purely with HTML and don’t use website builders like WordPress and GoDaddy because of how user-friendly and powerful the language is.
But what does HTML do, and what does it matter to SEO? HTML is used to create the visuals of a website. Even if you use a website builder tool like WordPress, they all convert your design choices into HTML in the background. Websites wouldn’t exist as they are today without HTML.
What Are HTML Tags?
Finding websites is the primary reason people use Google. One of the ways HTML has been updated to accommodate that is the ability to add HTML tags. These tags are small snippets of HTML coding that help search engines “read” your content properly, which they do when they’re indexing your website.
By doing this, HTML helps your SEO. Search engines will crawl your website to index them, which means they will test, grade, and then rank your content. Usually, they go in blind and use their base processing programs to figure out the quality of your website’s content. With HTML tags, these programs know what to look for and expect in each section of your web pages and posts. This can speed up the process, and drastically improve how well your site is tested and graded in terms of SEO.
HTML tags are added behind the backend of your site in most circumstances. SEO has become the most common and important use of HTML tags, but what are the tags you should be using?
Title Tags
Bar none, title tags are the most important HTML tags for SEO. This is the first thing every search engine will see and use to determine if your website provides quality content for people looking for specific keywords. If you use WordPress or other website builders, they’ll commonly call the title tag the SEO Title.
While this tag doesn’t have to match the actual title of the post, it should. This way you’ll attract the correct audience.
Header Tags
Every page should have a header and subheaders. They’re like subtitles that tell readers what the arguing points of the web page are. They typically go between body paragraphs, except for <h1></h1> tags that should be at the beginning of the page or post.
Having headers there will help search engines detail where and when their readers find the relevant content they’re looking for. Search engines prefer these tags because if they can find the information users need without much difficulty, they assume their users won’t have any issues either.
Image Tags
Images are an important part of any web page or post. They break up the monotony of text and grab hold of the reader’s attention span. It’s one of the best ways to keep people on your web page, and search engines know this. For this reason, they’ll rank web pages higher for having images.
What web pages also need are images with alt text. Images don’t always work. They break, time out, or may not be compatible with every type of computer. Sometimes, people can’t see them because they’re blind and use audio readers. When this happens, there needs to be alt text that people can read or have read to them when they can’t see the image.
Image tags are more than a way to add visuals, but also a way to add some needed accessibility that search engines want to see.
Canonical Tags
When you create a website, you first need to create and purchase a domain. That domain will then go between the typical text that goes with most websites:
- http://www.[insert domain].com
- https://www.[insert domain].com
- http://[insert domain].com
- https://[insert domain].com
Typically, your website will be https://www.[insert domain].com but you also want to receive visitors who type any of the other three. Canonical tags do that. These SEO HTML tags tell search engines that anyone who types the domain you tag in their search bar is looking for your website. This way they’ll be taken to your website instead of search results that may show your competitors. Make it quicker and easier for people to get you and your business.
HTML Tags are Confusing, Let ENX2 Legal Marketing Handle Them
HTML, tags, and other coding languages tend to fly over people’s heads. They’re not simple or easy to understand if you have no experience with coding. While HTML is considered simple compared to other programming languages, not everyone has the time or willingness to learn. It’s okay if this includes you too because we have a solution.
Let ENX2 Legal Marketing worry about it. Our expert website designers and programmers can make you a new and improved website with these SEO HTML tags and more. If you already have a website that you’re happy with, we can update your web pages with the proper tags and optimize them for SEO.
If you want a website that will bring clients to your door, contact ENX2 Legal Marketing today.