Trying to decipher the number of HTML Tags and keywords needed for the best SEO results seems to be a constantly moving target.
Online marketing has changed every year and sometimes several times per year. This brings up the conversation of whether or not HTML tags are still important and how many times you need to have your keywords included to gain the greatest SEO results.
What are HTML Tags?
When you look at a webpage, you see a clean, easy to read page that has photos, built-in links, and information you want to consume. In the background, the source code of the page, there are chunks of text that exist called HTML tags. These sections of content help search engines understand the subject of the content to assist you during a search to find the information you want to read.
Do Search Engines Still Place Importance on These Tags
In previous years, it was extremely important to add the keyword of the content to the page as often as possible. That left many websites with supporting content that was stuffed with keywords which made it difficult to read or write. Today, the influence of an HTML tag has less importance on the ranking of a page, but it still has some importance when the tag and the keyword are used correctly for SEO.
What Can Some of the HTML Tags Do for You?
While the use of tags to push ranking up higher isn’t as effective as it used to be, the proper use of a variety of tags can help improve your experience. These tags provide better navigation to match your search, give guidance to the search to find the most important parts of the site, and allow the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) snippets more attractive and informative.
Taking a Look at the Tags You May Want to Use
Title Tag
Title tags are some of the most important forms of HTML Tags and allow you to identify the title. Many times, these tags used to be stuffed with keywords because search engines looked for keywords in the titles. Today, the search engine can decipher the page topic without the exact keyword in the title.
The most effective way to use a title tag is to focus on one or two keywords and make sure it’s part of the main title of the content.
Meta Description Tag
One of the most important HTML tags is the Meta Description Tag. This tag is used in the SERP snippet and gives a short paragraph or sentence of text that talks about the subject of the content. This content should contain the keyword once but can include variations of your keyword to help increase the visibility of the page.
Meta Description Tags are only allowed to be of a specified length. If its too long, the search engine will cut it off and may leave out an important part of the information you’re trying to share.
Open Graph Tags
With the number of social media outlets we use today, Open Graph Tags have become extremely important. These tags allow you to control how your information is represented when shared on various social media channels. There are several parts to this version of the HTML tags you want to use, but the fact that an Open Graph Tag allows you to have an image is key.
It may take some practice and development to understand how to use an Open Graph Tag, but the final result can make it easy for you to have a professional appearance on social media sites.
Robot Tags
If you have pages you don’t want to be indexed by a search engine, one of the most useful HTML tags is the Robot Tag. This tag informs search engines which pages should be index and which ones can be left out. Robot Tags might not boost your SEO rankings, but they can be used to ensure your ranking doesn’t decrease.
Add a Robot Tag to pages that have thin content that might not help your rankings but contain information you still need to include in your site for users to find.
Canonical Tag
Do you have a few pages with similar content? Its probably going to happen when you’re in business for a long time or when you have similar products or services. Using a Canonical Tag allows you to prioritize which pages are more important than others. If you have duplicate content or extremely similar content, search engines will likely punish your site, the Canonical Tag can be a great way to avoid being penalized.
You need to keep all your information without search engines cutting your knees out from under you. The Canonical Tag is the right one HTML tags to use for this purpose.
Header Tags
One of the most widely used HTML tags is the Header Tag. This tag is usually identified by h1 in brackets before the information in the source code. The lower the number, the higher importance is placed on the tag. These tags assist search engines in reading your content and give structure to your page. If your page has a list to it, Google can make a list-type snippet by using your header tags.
Header tags are easy to use and provide the most organized structure to your content which assists search engines in showing your page the right way.
Alt Attribute
The Alt Text Attribute is part of the coding for an image tag and it describes the image. This type of tag allows the image to be optimized and will display as alternative text when the image cannot be loaded or a person with vision trouble is using a screen reader to understand the images present.
To optimize your HTML tags with the Alt Attribute, look for any empty sections to increase the ranking of your pages and give the most complete information to your images.
Learn to Use HTML Tags and Improve Your Content
The use of HTML tags will give search engines more information regarding your website pages and what you’re trying to say. Use them wisely and watch your page rankings increase.
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