Over-optimized content, artificial links, keyword stuffing…unusual SEO situations used to be aggressive in trying to get good SEO. But these often misunderstood SEO techniques quickly evolved to focus SEOs on quality-centric practices. Among the elements to monitor and optimize in order to boost your SEO, there are these HTML tags…
Did you say “HTML tag”?
HTML tags, better known as “tags”, are elements that structure online content. They make it possible to optimize the reading experience on the user’s side and to provide complete and precise information to search engines.
Written and used correctly, they will make the content of your site structured and understandable by the Google algorithm. Therefore, a site that is easy to understand will have a positive impact on its SEO and rank higher in the SERPs.
Any good SEO will therefore have to pay particular attention to them, so that Internet users and bots can understand them as clearly explained in this training module “The fundamentals of natural referencing”. Experts have many types of HTML tag, but we will especially remember these 6 elements.
HTML tags to watch for in SEO
Title Tag
As its name suggests, it is the title given to a page on your website. This is the most important HTML tag for SEO of your pagesbecause it helps search engines understand what each piece of content is about.
It is therefore THE main tag to optimize if you are aiming for the top positions on Google! It uses the text contained in the Title tag to display the pages or articles of your site in its search results.
For a good Title tag, it must:
- Contain the main keyword;
- Make users want to read and attract them to improve your click-through rate (CTR) in the SERPs;
- Count between 7 to 10 descriptive words;
- To be unique.
Note that this tag does not display directly on your web page, but it may be visible from the page’s HTML code. However, CMS like WordPress allow you to modify the content of the Title tag without having to code.
Meta tag
Metatags or meta tags, mostly used by search engines, contain information on the elements present in a Web page (texts, images, videos, etc.). They allow you to describe the content of your page, what users will find there. People also see them appear on Google and on your website.
Meta has several attributes, including: Viewport, Description, Robots or Open Graph Social Media. They are placed in the header of the HTML code of a web page.
MetaViewport
This tag is responsible for the responsiveness of your website on different devices with variable screen sizes (mobile, tablet, desktop). MetaViewport therefore adapts the interface of your website to each screen size, according to the values entered on this tag.
It is a crucial component of a website given the importance of mobile ergonomics which is currently one of the quality criteria required by Google.
So make sure it is functional. On WordPress, there are premium themes that can help you manage this tag.
Meta Description
On the user side, it’s black text that appears below the title tag in search results. It aims to describe the content of your web page by putting it into context. Basically, it’s the intro of the page, a very short and engaging summary.
In case your page does not have one, the search engine will improvise a page from the content of your site.
Admittedly, a meta description is not used by Google bots for your SEO, but it plays an essential role: make users want to click on your page.
To be effective, the meta description must:
- Be unique and attractive;
- Include your main keyword, all in a readable sentence;
- Be between 150 and 160 characters.
Meta Robots
The meta robots tag determines how search engines crawl and index pages on a site.
However, some search engines do not respect the instructions contained in the robots meta tag. Google, Yahoo and Bing are very sensitive to this and take meta robots into account.
Meta robots is a variation of the Meta tag. Indeed, the value of this property determines the interaction between search engines and your website, as follow, nofollow, noimageindex, noindex, noarchive, unavailable_after.
If this tag does not appear on a web page, it is up to search engines to decide how to interpret or index the page. It can be managed with the Yoast SEO plugin if you are using WordPress. You can also find them in the robots.txt file, at the root of your site.
Title tags or Hn tags
This tag is divided into several types ranging from 1 to 6 (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6).
Their objective: to bring clarity to the text by structuring and prioritizing it.
Hn tags are displayed in body text, but do not appear in search engine results.
They are analyzed by the robots in charge of indexing your pages. With good optimization, they can therefore strengthen the information obtained during the exploration process and thus improve your ranking in search results.
Thus, these are components not to be overlooked if you want to improve your natural referencing!
To help you further:
- Use only one h1 tag (which is less than 60 characters) per text;
- Distribute the title tags in the correct order (h2 for chapters, h3 for a subsection of chapters, etc.);
- Choose clear and concise titles that contain the main keywords.
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