HTML is the underlying code used to create web pages. Search engines can pick up ranking signals from specific HTML elements. Scroll down to learn about some of the most important HTML elements to achieve SEO success.
SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the process of getting traffic from the search results on search engines. Follow the title link above for an informative video.
Imagine that you wrote 100 different books but gave them all the same exact title. How would anyone understand that they are all about different topics?
Imagine that you wrote 100 different books, and while they did have different titles, the titles weren’t very descriptive — maybe just a single word or two. Again, how would anyone know, at a glance, what the books were about?
HTML titles have always been and remain the most important HTML signal that search engines use to understand what a page is about.
Bad titles on your pages are like having bad book titles in the examples on the previous slide. In fact, if your HTML titles are deemed bad or not descriptive, Google changes them.
So think about what you hope each page will be found for, relying on the keyword research you’ve already performed. Then craft unique, descriptive titles for each of your pages.
Follow this link Common Missed Opportunities for more information about optimizing your site content.
The meta description tag allows you to suggest how you’d like your pages to be described in search listings. If the HTML title is the equivalent to a book title, the meta description is like the blurb on the back describing the book.
A meta description that contains the keywords searched for (in bold) may catch the user’s eye. A well-crafted meta description may help ‘sell’ that result to the user. Both can result in additional clicks to your site. As such, it makes sense for the meta description tag to be counted as a success factor.
Follow this link How To Write A Meta Description That Gets Click-Throughs for more information.
What if you could tell search engines what your content was about in their own “language”? Behind the scenes, sites can use specific markup (code) that make it easy for search engines to understand the details of the page content and structure.
The result of structured data often translates into what is called a ‘rich snippet‘, a search listing that has extra bells and whistles that make it more attractive and useful to users. The most common rich snippet you’re likely to encounter is reviews/ratings which usually includes eye-catching stars.
What do structured snippets mean to your page level content strategy? Click Here to read more.
Schema.org provides a collection of shared vocabularies webmasters can use to mark up their pages in ways that can be understood by the major search engines: Google, Microsoft, Yandex and Yahoo!
Click here for a guide to Schema markup and strucured data SEO opportunities.
Header tags are a formal way to identify key sections of a web page. Search engines have long used them as clues to what a page is about. If the words you want to be found for are in header tags, you have a slightly increased chance of appearing in searches for those words.
Header tags are useful when they reflect the logical structure (or outline) of a page. If you have a main headline, use an H1 tag. Relevant subheads should use an H2 tag. Use headers as they make sense and they may reinforce other ranking factors.
