HTML is the cornerstone of the internet.
It defines the structure of the website and brings your pages to life.
Tags are part of the HTML markup – they are small bits of code that play a crucial role in the world of SEO and content creation.
In order to properly optimize your website for Google, you need to understand what individual tags can do and which ones you should implement on your pages.
In this comprehensive blog post, we will therefore take a look at:
- What exactly HTML tags are (& how they work)
- Why these tags are important in SEO
- 10 essential HTML tags (+ attributes) and their usage
Let’s dive in.
What are HTML tags in SEO?
HTML tags are short pieces of code on the web page that provide technical information about its content.
The purpose of these tags is to tell search engines how to “interact” with the page, how it should be displayed in Google Search as well as to visually adjust the page’s content in web browsers (for better user experience).
Here’s how these tags can look in the HTML document of the web page:
<head> <title>My awesome title tag</title> <meta name="description" content="My meta description for the search snippet"/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://mywebsite.com/blog/interesting-blog-post/" /> </head>
Before we dive into the importance and usability of these tags on the page, let’s take a quick look at the difference between regular HTML tags, meta tags, and their attributes.
HTML tags vs. meta tags vs. attributes
Although HTML tags, meta tags, and attributes are technically all just small pieces of code in the HTML document, they are located at different places on the web page and play different roles in SEO and content creation:
1. HTML tag – any tag in the HTML document that provides technical information about the page and/or visually adjusts its content to users and search engines. HTML tags consist of opening <>, closing, </> or empty tags (e.g. <br> tag) with specific information between them (e.g. H1 headline):
<h1>This is the headline of my web page</h1>
2. Meta tag – it provides contextual information about the page in the <head> section of the HTML document. Meta tags are visible only to search engines and web browsers (e.g. meta description):
<meta name="description" content="My awesome meta description for the page!">
3. Attributes – provide additional information about the HTML (or meta) tags. They consist of special terms within the tag that can influence its…