13 Essential HTML Tags that Separate SEO Pros from the Rookies

 

Are you struggling to get the online rankings and visibility your site needs? Or perhaps you’re wondering if other website owners or marketers know something you don’t. You could be on to something.

What’s their secret, then? Well, it could be that they’re using HTML tags for SEO. 

Basically, these tags speak the language of the internet through source code and communicate with search engines, making your site easier to index and find. If that’s what you’re looking for, I’ve got some essential tags you can implement into your online content.

Ready to find out more? Then, let’s get started.

Key Takeaways

• HTML tags are essential for structuring web content, helping search engines understand a page’s context and relevance.
  
• Properly optimized title tags and meta descriptions can significantly influence search engine rankings and click-through rates.
  
• Using header tags (H1-H6) and list tags improves the readability of content, making it easier for users and search engines to navigate.
  
• Alt text for images not only aids SEO, but also enhances accessibility for visually impaired users, creating a better overall user experience.
  
• Implementing robot meta tags and canonical tags allows webmasters to control how search engines index their content, reducing the risk of duplicate content issues.
  
  
  

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways 
• What Are HTML Tags?
• Why Are HTML Tags Important for SEO?
• Essential SEO HTML Tags
  • 1. Title Tags <title>
  • 2. Meta Descriptions <meta description>
  • 3. Header Tags <h1> to <h6>
  • 4. Image Alt Text <img>
  • 5. Canonical Tags <canonical>
  • 6. Robots Meta Tag <meta robots>
  • 7. List Tag <li>
  • 8. Hyperlinks <a>
  • 9. Structured Data Markup <schema>
  • 10. Anchor Tags <a>
  • 11. Open Graph Tags and Twitter Cards
  • 12. Stylesheets
  • 13. No Follow Link Tags
• FAQs
• Conclusion

What Are HTML Tags?

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) tags are the building blocks of web content. They structure and format text, images, and links in a way browsers can understand, acting as labels or instructions to tell browsers how to display webpage content.

You can use them as part of your SEO as HTML tags, like meta tags (alt tags, meta descriptions, etc.) to help give search engines context and help them understand a page’s content.

As illustrated above, HTML tags usually come in pairs, and you can use them to organize headings, paragraphs, lists, etc.

Why Are HTML Tags Important for SEO?

HTML tags are crucial to SEO as they:

• Define site structure: HTML tags define headings, paragraphs, links, and images. This ensures your website is well presented and organized so browsers and search engines can interpret it.
• Enhance understanding: When you use HTML tags to give your content a clear and logical order, with heading tags, lists, paragraphs, etc., you make it more user-friendly and easier to read. HTML tags also help search engines interpret content like meta descriptions and title tags. They improve accessibility for users who depend on screen readers, too.
• Enable keyword optimization: By putting keywords in HTML tags, like titles, subheadings, and URLs, and using them for alt text, anchor links, etc., search engines can better interpret your content’s relevance, which can lead to better SERP rankings. These tags also allow schema markup for areas like events and recipes.
• Boost readability: HTML makes content easier to read and navigate. It does this by structuring content through headings and paragraphs, adding scannability with lists, and organizing data with tables.

Essential SEO HTML Tags

We’ve covered how HTML meta tags for SEO can improve your site’s structure and user experience. Next, let’s dive into some essential tags.

1. Title Tags <title>

The title tag is arguably the most important tag to be familiar with when it comes to increasing your rankings.

For any search engine to rank your website, it needs to know what your content, each page, and your site as a whole are about.

Title HTML tags describe the topic of each page or piece of content on your website. And it does it in a way that makes sense to the search engines.

Here’s where the title tag will show on Google.

Your title tags need to contain the keywords you target with your content, telling search engines how to rank you.

In the above title tag, for example, I’m going to guess that Investopedia is trying to rank for the keyword “digital marketing.”

How can I guess this?

Well, if you notice the similarities between the meta description and title tag, both have that exact phrase.

And doing this is super important for your rankings. But we’ll talk about the meta description in more depth soon.

For now, let’s talk about how to include that title tag in your website. Here’s what the HTML code for that title looks like:

<title>What Is Digital Marketing?</title>

Start the text with <title> and end with </title> to indicate to search engines the topic and keyword you’re discussing on the web page.

Each page of your website should have a unique title tag. You don’t have to check for this manually. You can use Ubersuggest to speed up the process and help you make the necessary changes.

Step #1: Enter Your URL and Click Search

Step #2: Click Site Audit

Step #3: Scroll to the bottom and Click “See All Issues”

A quick search (control+f) for the word “title” will pinpoint any issues with your title tags.

In this example, there are no duplicate title tags. However, there are two title tag-related concerns to address:

• 37 pages with a title tag that is too long
• 1 page with a title tag that is too short

These are items you should look to address as soon as possible to support your SEO.

2. Meta Descriptions <meta description>

Right after the title tag, the meta tag is an absolute must for anyone serious about using SEO HTML tags to boost their online presence. 

Think of the meta description as the synopsis on the back of a book. The meta description briefly summarizes a page’s content, which appears below the title in search results. 

If you do this right, your meta description will help you rank well on Google and sell the “click” with compelling copy, positively affecting user engagement.

Here’s where the meta description shows up in a Google result.

Here’s what the meta description HTML tag looks like when you click on the link from the Google result above:

<meta name=”description” content=”Digital marketing is the act of selling products and services through channels such as social media, SEO, email, and mobile apps.”/>

Ensure continuity between your title tag and your meta description so that search engines can easily recognize what your post is about.

If you’re using WordPress, follow a tutorial for adding meta descriptions. Give each page a unique meta description, include relevant information about the content in each description, and make them descriptive.

3. Header Tags <h1> to <h6>

Header tags organize content hierarchically, allowing search engines and users to understand a page’s structure. They’re really easy to include in your content, and they’re one of the most essential HTML meta tags for SEO.

Think about it.

When you tag all your topical headings throughout the post, you tell search engines exactly what your content is discussing.

This is how Google creates the snippets you’ll sometimes see when looking for a topic.

There are several different header tags. Depending on your format, you might have h1, h2, h3, and sometimes h4 or even h5.

These will get progressively smaller, making great headings and subheadings to organize your content.

Here’s what the HTML tag looks like for Erin Morrison’s wedding photography site looks like:

When you see the site online, this is how it appears:

Since the author of this content organized it into easy-to-read steps, Google knows how to structure it when showing it to web searchers.

There are two easy ways to add a title tag.

If you’re using a visual editor, you can usually just click on the correct heading.

In an HTML editor, include the tags <h1> for the front and </h1> for the end. You can do the same thing with all other header tags.

4. Image Alt Text <img>

Alt tags are an SEO opportunity many people miss. They describe images for visually impaired users by enabling screen readers to read the text and ensure search engines understand what the image is about. Adding these tags improves accessibility and provides context to images, aiding SEO.

Why are image alt tags so crucial for general search purposes?

Search engines can’t read images, but search engines can interpret SEO tags in HTML.

This means that you need to include alt tags on all of your screenshots and photos to have a chance for your images to rank on Google.

That way, when someone searches the “Images” tab, they can still find your content.

Here’s what the alt HTML tag looks like on the W3C website’s source code:

And what it looks like to visitors:

To include this tag on images in your WordPress post, click on an image to see this bar appear.

Click on the little pencil.

On the side, you’ll see an empty box labeled “Alt text.”

Simple!

5. Canonical Tags <canonical>

If you have multiple pages with similar content, canonical tags are helpful to prevent duplicate content issues and consolidate link equity as they show search engines your preferred version of a web page. 

Here’s an example of what these HTML meta tags for SEO look like behind the scenes:

The canonical tag is also great for organizing content and prioritizing one web page over a duplicate.

“But,” you think to yourself, “I don’t have any duplicate web pages.”

Well, I hate to break it to you, but you could be wrong. Your content management system might be creating duplicate pages you don’t know about, for example.

Since we’re human beings and not search engines, that’s difficult to understand at first.

Let me explain. A search engine could crawl the same web page using all of these different URLs.

And to us, all those seem like the same web page. However, for a search engine, each one is a duplicate. 

This becomes a problem when search engines are trying to rank your content. It confuses the search engine and ranks each of these URLs separately. 

To solve this problem, you can use the canonical tag to specify which URL Google should pay attention to above all others.

Here’s what the tag looks like.

Doing this will help search engines read your website and rank you better.

6. Robots Meta Tag <meta robots>

The robot meta tag instructs search engine crawlers on handling a specific webpage. These SEO HTML tags allow you to control whether a search engine should index a page and how it appears in the SERP results. 

If I wanted to tell search engines not to index a specific page and not to follow any links on it, my robot meta tag would look something like this:

7. List Tag <li>

List tags allow you to create ordered and unordered lists, enhance the content structure, and improve readability for users and search engines. Publishing well-structured content makes it easier for search engines to understand the context and content hierarchy.

Another benefit of lists is that the search engines can use them for rich snippets, giving you the chance of appearing at the top of the search results. 

Lists also improve readability, helping visitors stay on your page longer while improving user engagement and experience.

Here’s what the HTML tags coding from the Shoppable Ads post on my blog looks like: 

And how it appears online:

8. Hyperlinks <a>

Hyperlinks are essential for connecting web pages, allowing users and search engines to navigate between related content seamlessly. When users click on a hyperlink, it directs them to another page, enhancing their browsing experience. For search engines, hyperlinks help discover and index content, improving site visibility.

Using HTML SEO tags like hyperlinks benefits your site because they allow search engines to crawl your website, give it a clear hierarchy, and organize your content. Hyperlinks also let you link to other pages (internal linking) and add CTAs.

In the example above:

• The href attribute specifies the URL the link points to.
• The target=”_blank” attribute ensures the link opens in a new tab.
• The text “Visit Example Website” is the clickable part of the hyperlink.

9. Structured Data Markup <schema>

Structured data markup using the SEO HTML tag <schema> helps search engines understand the context of your content, allow rich snippets, and improve visibility in search results. For example, your content may get highlighted as an FAQ rich snippet, a review, a recipe, etc.

This additional visibility can help your SEO, improving your site’s click-through rate.

Here’s what a Google search for “Best Hotel New York City” looks like in rich snippets.

10. Anchor Tags <a>

Anchor text tags, represented by the <a> HTML element, are essential for creating hyperlinks connecting different web pages or content. They play a crucial role in site navigation, allowing users to discover related content easily. 

Take a look at this example from my recent post about SearchGPT:

See the orange text? That’s the anchor text for a clickable link to further information.

This linking structure also enhances SEO by showing search engines the relevance and context of your linked content, improving domain authority.

Why would you want to use anchor tags in your content?

Whenever you want to include stats or images from different sources, you must ensure you give credit where credit is due; Usually, a link to that website will suffice.

Here’s what the anchor text HTML SEO tag looks like:

The actual link tag is this part: <a href=”http://example-blog.com”>. And the anchor text is directly after it: Discover insightful articles and updates on my blog!.</a>.

11. Open Graph Tags and Twitter Cards

Open Graph tags and Twitter Cards are essential tools for optimizing content’s appearance on social media platforms, improving visibility on social platforms, and increasing engagement. 

By using specific <meta> SEO tags in the HTML of a webpage, these tools control the title, description, and image accompanying shared links. This enables you to display your site differently on various social media sites and create appealing snippets to encourage click-throughs.

The main benefits of Open Graph tags and Twitter cards are better brand visibility and more engagement for your social channels.

You can code these yourself, but no worries if you lack the technical expertise, as you can use the Yoast or All-in-one SEO plugins. 

12. Stylesheets

Stylesheets are one of the most vital SEO HTML tags if you want consistency across your website.

Stylesheets ensure that websites are visually appealing and responsive so they adapt to different screen sizes and resolutions, enhancing usability and keeping visitors engaged. You can use stylesheets to define styles for elements such as fonts, colors, layouts, and white space.

These stylesheets use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to control the presentation of web content, significantly impacting user experience and how content displays on various devices.

Here is the HTML stylesheet code for Nike.com.  

The script instructs search engines to load two CSS stylesheets from Nike’s website and defines the visual appearance and layout of the webpage. 

The SEO benefits include improved page load speed, increased dwell time, enhanced mobile-friendliness, and easier indexing due to better navigation.

13. No Follow Link Tags

There are a few reasons you need to know about nofollow link tags.

Nofollow tags tell search engines not to lend credibility to the backlink that you’re creating for the website.

A nofollow tag looks like this:

In this example, the rel=”nofollow” attribute tells search engines not to follow the link to “https://example.com/” or pass any authority to that site. 

But why do you need to know about nofollow links?

There are a few reasons.

If you’re working on a backlink SEO strategy for a website, you’ll need to know whether the backlinks you get are dofollow or nofollow. Dofollow will help your rankings more than nofollow links.

Here’s how you can do it on your WordPress site.

Click on the HTML option in your blog post editor.

Add the link you want to include with this clause.

The link won’t affect the other website’s SEO and will protect you from a damaged domain authority.

FAQs

What are HTML tags?

HTML tags act as building blocks for web pages. They add structure and format the pages’ content and links so browsers can understand them. They also help organize your site.

Are HTML tags important for SEO?

Yes. The structure that these tags provide helps search engines understand the context of your site and crawl it more easily. 

The tags also enable keyword optimization as you can use them throughout your content in headings, alt text, and titles, etc., so search engines can interpret the content’s relevance.

They also influence how pages appear in search results and provide an enhanced user experience.

Conclusion

If you want to give your website a visibility boost, then adding some HTML tags for SEO could be all you need.

You can use HTML to tell search engines exactly what your website is about and how they should rank you.

To get the best results, the HTML tags you need to pay attention to are the title tag, meta description, header tags, image alt tags, nofollow links, anchor text, and canonical tags.And if you need some extra help, my Ubersuggest tool can find the keywords you need to add to your content.