HTML Tags & Search Engine Optimization
This post is a part of series on Search Engine Optimization.
When we discuss about Search Engine Optimization, everyone talks about Content is King!! But the question is how to win the battle? In this post we will focus on how to use HTML tags and keywords to optimize our content for better search engine rankings and to make our content a real king.
Save Your Content
We all know that Search Engines don’t like duplicate content so the first step to follow it to keep our content unique and make sure its not stolen or republished on any other website, we don’t want. You can read more about protecting your content in my previous post on how to copyright and protect your blog content. This will help Google to index our page in appropriate category to improve our listings in search results.
HTML Tags & Search Engine Optimization
Over a period of time I have learned that we can optimize our website’s or blog’s SEO Score by properly using HTML or xHTML tags. Meta tags & Keywords are already explained in this series and you can read more about these topics here. Let’s learn more about increasing SEO Score with HTML tags.
TITLE Tag:
This tag is placed within the <head></head> tag to set the title of the page which is displayed in the Title Bar and Search Results. It’s really important to have our keywords in this tag as all search engines consider this tag as important as meta keyword tag. This tag will be displayed upfront in the search results so it’s really important to be careful while setting the title of the page. If you notice the title of this page it says “HTML Tags & Search Engine Optimization” which includes these two keywords “HTML Tags” and “Search Engine Optimization“ to attract Google bots to index this page under these keywords.
If we put all our keywords in the title tag, it will have a negative effect on SEO Score as it will look spam to Human Eye and users will think twice to visit the page. We need to make a balance between Search Bots and Human Eye to attract both of them at the same time.
Keyword Rich Domain Name & Links:
I am sure you are aware of this well known term; “keyword rich domain name“, if you’re not, it’s all about choosing a domain name with keywords we have selected for our business or personal website.
Now you must be thinking why I have chosen www.MohitAneja.com for this website. It’s not at all a selling keyword and only few people might hit the search button with Mohit Aneja typed in the search box. However for me it’s a different story. I don’t blog for money or to sell any products to make a living. This blog/website is my home on the WWW (world wide web) and I believe all my friends and family members can find me with my real name :D. I am the first one in Google, Yahoo and MSN search results with keyword “Mohit Aneja“. Pretty easy to find me, huh!! 
Same way if you are providing info about Personal Loans or anything else you can register a domain with the keywords. I would like to change you can register a domain with the keywords with you cannot register a domain with the keywords. Why? Because domain marketers have spoiled the fun, they have already registered almost all keyword rich domains and left them in a domain parking area with no use, expecting $$$ in return.
So Is there any solution or work around??
Yes there is, As these domains are in parking lot, search engines don’t index them. Now, what can we do to enhance our website for such keywords. Let’s take an example and assume our desired keyword or domain name is “best design studio” and is not available with .com, .net, .org or any other but is listed for sale on some domain marketing website.
The work around for this situation is to keep this keyword in internal links. 
Hyper-Link tag and Title:
While creating a website we need to create some directories to place our images, html, javascript, css files etc. so we can create the directories with our desired keyword as directory names. For example, to keep different files we can have the following directory structure on the server:
Landing Page: index.htm
HTML FIles: best-design-studio-html-files
Images: best-design-studio-images
But, How will it help to increase the keyword Score of your website? While creating the navigation for a website we need to link all the pages to our home page and viceversa, so this keyword will be appearing a lot of times in the code which is clearly visible to search bots and your pages will be indexed with the same links. Make sure you give proper title to the link as it will be added in the code and considered by search engine bots while indexing. This way we will not be using the keywords one after another so this practice will not be considered as keyword spamming. I have tried this practice with one of my other websites and it works.
Headings (H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6)
Now lets talk about the heading tags, If we use keywords in heading tags it will have a positive impact on SEO score. Heading tags are bigger than normal text and search bots focus on the text between these tags. However if we use H1 tag it might look bad because the font is really big for the design and layout. Here you can use some CSS code to format the heading tags and make it a little smaller. I know what’s in your mind!! Keep everything in the H1 tag with the same formatting for peragraphs.
NOTE: Make sure you use heading tags for maximum 5 to 6 words and don’t even think of replacing it with peragraph tag as in a paragraph you have a lot of -ve keywords like “a, the, on, as etc.” normally known as stop words. These stop keywords are ignored by search bots. So this practice can have a total -ve impact on the search enging optimization of your page.
Bold (<b></b>,<strong></strong>):
With in a paragraph you can mark “best design studio” that’s our desired keyword in bold tags as I did in this line itself. This will help you to increase the SEO score of the page. However, please make sure you are not using bold tags every time you are writing best design studio to avoid keyword spamming, try to keep it 4-5 times in a page not more than that.
Image and Alt Tags:
As discussed about the website structure above we have our images in best-design-studio-images directory so this way your page is also optimized for image search for this keyword. I hope you know that Alt tags are used for description of the images which is displayed as a tool-tip on the browser. This tag is also considered important by search bots as they can’t read images but they can read the title tag associated with that image. Again avoid keyword spamming, I would recommend you to use each keyword not more than three times in ALT or Title tags.
Flash & Video tags:
Search engine bots cannot read images and text in flash and videos so avoid using them. A flash website looks very nice to human eye due to lot of animation and cool effects, but Search Engine Bots simply ignore them as its an alien language or code for them. However if its really important to embed flash or video on a website make sure you are using the keywords in the title tag of the code. This way you can optimize your flash and video codes too.
I hope the above information was helpful to understand a little bit more about Search Engine Optimization and indexing. If you feel that I have missed something in this post please feel free to add your inputs in the comments and don’t forget to share it with your friends as they might find it useful.
Wow that’s a long post, anyways I hope you find it useful.
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Some of the basic tags advice here. I learn something here. But, usually, I use nvu editor to get html codes. It is easier to get the codes than doing it from scratch.
Atnizs last blog post..
This is a good read for beginners and well written. I would suggest against using the (b) tag and use (strong) instead. Also try to stay away from using tables for your design layout, CSS produces much shorter and cleaner code. Not to mention it makes changing your site layout so much easier.
Very nice info & a very nice blog too..Gonna Bookmark it.
Thanks
Passions last blog post..Speed Up Startup & Loading Time In Firefox
Quote: “…domain marketers have spoiled the fun, they have already registered almost all keyword rich domains and left them in a domain parking area with no use, expecting $$$ in return.”
Yes, we certainly have registered most of the good ones. And yes, many of us do get fine revenues in domain parking. That is part of our domaining business model. However, whining about how someone else earns their income serves no purpose. If you want good keyword-rich domains, there are literally millions of them available on the secondary market, aka the domain aftermarket.
@Chris: Agree, this domaining business model works for the owners but I mentioned about spoiling the fun and the ease of registering good domains.
My views: “Not an ethical business, its spamming the internet with useless ads.”
A little time spent optimizing your site will pay off so much in the long run. I think that this is one of the lessons beginning bloggers need to learn. Great, well-written post for beginners. Blogging is way more than just writing a few words and commenting on other blogs. Tiny details make an average blogger and great one.
Mohit
Great stuff. but you left out the importance of rotating the keyword. for example: if you have three keywords 1. coffee machines 2. coffee makers 3. coffee machines UK, you should try to rotate the keyword. I recommend a maximum of 3 keywords and if you have a image use an alt text like cheap coffee machines. Try and will do wonders for you.
Great post…there are a ton of good points in there. I would like to point out that flash files (that are not loaded with javascript) are now being indexed to some degree. The degree is not exactly known. However, in my estimation it is now a good idea to use a flash header with some keywords in the flash file. If the contents of the.SWF get indexed, you will be much better off than just using an image. However, the text inside of the flash file has to be actual text, not an image.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html
Jasons last blog post..Search Results…As Pure As The Wind Driven Snow
first, I like this blog theme design
anyway, I still confuse with SEO, and any plugin to support.
tonys last blog post..Mr Bojangles
This article spells out the best strategy for keywords. The insight about parked domain names was really insightful.
However, I have heard that using keywords is less important than it used to be. It seems that the search engines want links these days. Domain names and title keywords are really important but article keywords seem not to be.