In an article, everything that you write matters. The headline, the introduction, the body, the conclusion, all of it matters.
But do you know, what is the one thing that influences the performance of your website in search engines?
It is the HTML tags in your post. The <head> and <body> of your post with HTML tags.
HTML tags are basically sections of text that exist in the HTML code. They are not visible to the readers who land on a website, unless, of course, they look it in the source code of the page.
These tags provide data to the search engines and help the search engines to understand what the content on the site is about.
Their task is to highlight the most important parts of the content so that the particular page can stand out and have a position on the SERP.
Higher the position of the web page on the SERP, more the number of people visit it. This means that HTML tags are an important part of on-page SEO of a website.
Even though the influence of HTML tags on SERPs has seen a downfall in recent years, there are still some forms of HTML tags that are quite crucial to the SEO of a web page. These tags still do the following:
- They make the user experience better while providing better page navigation and the best possible match with the keywords that the user entered.
- They guide the search engines about which is the most important part of the content on a web page and which parts the search engine should neglect because of lack of relevance.
- The HTML tags make the SERP snippets seem more visually attractive.
Now, let’s see which HTML tags are most important for the successful SEO of a website.
Important HTML Tags for SEO:
1. The title tag:
When it comes to optimizing your on-page SEO, the most important HTML tag that exists is the title tag.
When a search engine is ranking your website, it has to know what the content on that web page is about and it also needs to know what the overall website is about. Here is where the role of title tag comes into play.
The job of the title tag is to describe the topics on each web page in a way so that search engines can understand that language.
The keywords that you are targeting for better SEO should be placed in the headline itself so that the title tag can tell the search engines where they should rank your website.
Let us now discuss how you can include title tag in the website HTML. You have to start the text with <title> and finish it with </title>. This is an indication for search engines about the topic that you are writing on and the keywords that you are using on that particular web page.
If you have a WordPress website, here is how you can include the title tag in the website HTML.
- First, you will need to go to the WordPress dashboard.
- Then you have to click on ‘Posts’.
- Next, you have to choose the post to which you would like to add a title tag.
- Then you will find a section in the post where it will say “Enter title here”. You just have to type the title tag there.
Since your blog is a WordPress site, you do not have to worry about the HTML tags by yourself. You just have to type the title that you want for your article and WordPress will take care of the rest.
But if you do not use a WordPress website, you will have to add the title tags all by yourself.
2. Meta description tag:
After the title tag, the next most important HTML tag is the meta description tag. It is absolutely crucial for anybody who takes it so seriously.
The meta description of an article is most like the synopsis of the story that is there at the back cover of a book.
The title of the article is the heading and then just below the headline, there are just a couple of sentences that give a little sneak peek into what readers can expect from the article.
When done right, the meta description does not only help your article have a good ranking on Google but it also creates a compelling copy.
You have to make sure that there is continuity between the title tag and the meta description so that search engines do not have any problem in recognizing what you have written in the article.
For example, in your title tag you have used the phrase ‘digital marketing’, and in the meta description, you have just used ‘SEO’.
In that case, search engines will be confused as to what your article is talking about and will rank your website lower on the search engine result page, thinking that your content is not relevant for the user.
Also, each web page on your website should have only one target keyword, which should be included both in the title tag and in the meta description.
If you are using the phrase ‘digital marketing strategy’ in the title tag, make sure to stick to the same phrase word by word in the meta description as well.
If you use something else in the meta description, there will be inconsistency and search engines will be confused. In the rest of the article, you are free to use various permutation combination of related keywords, so that the article stays more in context and it’s more relevant.
Now, let us see how you can include a meta description in your article. Again, if you are using a WordPress website, it becomes super easy to include a meta description.
You just have to click on the post where you want to add a meta description. There on the right side, you will find a box saying ‘SEO description’.
Click on that box and then write down your meta description which should include the target keyword and the ideal length should be 160 characters or less.
Then you can click on the preview button to see what the article would look like in the Google search engine result page.
3. Header tags:
Header tags are pretty easy to include in your article. That is because there is no special place where header tags have to be placed. They are placed right into the content of the article.
There are several kinds of header tags depending on the format of the article. There are H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, and even H6 tags. Starting from H1 to H6, the size of the text just keeps getting smaller.
The smaller ones are the subheadings that you can use to organize your content into different categories and sections. But header tags not just only help organize content, they also boost the SEO of the webpage.
When you give header tags to all the subheadings that are there in the article, you are telling the search engines precisely what your content is about. This is how search engines like Google create snippets.
Including header tag in your article is one of the simplest things to do. If you are using a visual editor to include the tags, you can just click on the correct heading.
If you are using an HTML Editor, you have to include the tags <h1> at the front and </h1> at the back of the headline of the article. Follow the same process for the other header tag that you used in the article.
4. Image alt tags:
Alt Tags provide huge opportunities for SEO that a lot of people seem to miss. People make the mistake of focusing only on the words that they are using in the text to write content and completely seem to forget about the images.
When a user is searching for something, he does not necessarily stick to the information under the “All’ tab, he also goes to the ‘Images’ section in the Google search result page. When a user visits the images page, the entire SEO game gets a bit different.
The thing about search engines is that they cannot read images, but they are able to read words and texts. Which means that in order to rank your images on Google, you have to include alt tags of all the images and screenshots that you use in an article. So, when someone is searching for something in the ‘Images’ tab, they will still be able to find your website content.
If you are using a WordPress blog, here is how you can add alt tags to images.
- To include alt tag in images, you have to click on an image on your WordPress post, and there a bar will appear.
- On that bar, you will find a little pencil like icon. Click on it.
- Then on the side, you will find there is an Empty box that is labeled as ‘Alt text’.
- In that box, type something brief that would describe the image.
That text might or might not include your targeted keyword for the post. The alt tag has its own SEO tactics to implement. It does not need keywords.
Then, save the changes in the post. Repeat the same process for all the images that you are using in the post. This increases the chance of people finding your post even from the ‘Images’ section of the Google SERP.
5. No-follow link tags:
So, why are no follow tags important?
These nofollow tags are the ones that tell search engines that it should not lend or attach any credence to the backlink that you have created for your website.
When you link to a website or just some content on that website, you are increasing the domain authority of that website that it is already enjoying.
With a no follow tag, the authority of the website does not increase or decrease. But the link that you created will still work effortlessly. It will direct the user to the desired post, without boosting the SEO of that website.
You might be wondering why do you even need to know about these kinds of tags. That is because, when you are working on building backlinks as an effective SEO strategy for a website, it is very important that you know if the backlinks that you are getting are do follow links or no follow links.
The dofollow links that you get, help boost the SEO of your website. The nofollow links do not.
But some SEO experts believe that the nofollow links do help in boosting the SEO and the rankings of the website, but not as effectively as dofollow links. So the nofollow links are not totally useless. Their worth is just a lot lesser than that of the dofollow links.
Again, if you are linking to a website that has poor domain authority, you will want to consider using the nofollow tags. That will make sure that your own domain authority is not compromised.
Here is how you can create a nofollow link on your WordPress website.
Open the post that you want to create a no follow the link for. There go to the blog post editor and click on the HTML option.
Add whatever link you want to add with a certain clause.
Once it is added, it will no longer affect the SEO of the website you have linked to. It will also make sure that your domain authority is not compromised or damaged in any way.
Wrapping Up:
Every kind of HTML tag has some role to play in the SEO of a website. Since organic search and organic traffic matters so much to a business, the importance of HTML tags will never go out of the market.
However, when you are working on the SEO of your website, you have to know which HTML tags are important for you and which are not. That is exactly why we wrote this article for you.