Search engine optimization or SEO helps to improve your website ranking in search engines.
70 % of marketers found that the SEO of a site is more effective than PPC.
So, better SEO strategies help sites rank higher than competitors.
Let’s take an example of a social media marketing startup website.
The website was well structured and designed with minor SEO settings, but it was one of the millions in the crowded online world.
Sadly, that website never appeared in any top search results. According to research, currently, Google has 86 percent of the search engine market.
All the content and design are worthless unless people can’t find the website in search engines.
If someone’s going to buy from a website, they visit it first. Statistics show that 78% of people will locally buy after searching.
To get passive traffic on your website, you need to rank it first on search engines. Lets see how is it possible to bring traffic to your website?
There are 2 ways to generate more clicks on your website.
- Paid search
- Organic Search
Let me explain “paid search” first.
For instance, if you go to Google and search for the certain products, you’ll see an ad at the top of SERPs. These are paid results because the website owners paid Google to show their ad.
Organic search results are earned not paid. When someone puts a certain keyword and sites that appear on the first 3 results, without any paid advertisements are considered organic rankings becasue the Google algorithm ranked it organically.
Research shows that organic websites gets 70% more clicks than paid ones.
And to rank a website, you should know about SEO and HTML tags.
Lets explore html tags for SEO to optmize your wordpress website
Title tags
The most important tag to increase your site ranking is called “title tag.”
Title tag helps to make Google understand the topic of your content.
As best SEO practice, you should include main keyword in your webpage title. It should contain, main keyword that you wish to target for your rankings. Your webpage title should use keyword in context to the meaning of your webpage’s content to tell search engines how they should rank you.
In the above example title tag is “social media marketing.”
You can notice the similarities between the title tag and meta description; both have the exact keywords.
Best practices for title tag
Your title should encourage your visitors to click the search result and contain your targeted keywords.
- Length – Google will display the first 50 characters of your title, so better to fit between 50-60 characters.
- Naturally, incorporate keywords – Do not go for keyword stuffing. Just make sure that your title forms a coherent sentence and sounds natural.
- Brand name – If you have a brand name, then it’s ideal for adding it to the title.
HTML code
Title tag on the HTML page looks like this –
Start your text with <title>, and end with </title>.
Let’s go to your WordPress dashboard and click on “Posts.”
In WordPress, select the “edit post” to add a title tag. Now, “enter title here.”
When you’re writing a post on WordPress, then it will add HTML tags automatically. So, you don’t need to worry about it.
Meta description tag
Just below the title tag, the meta tag is absolute important to your SEO efforts.
The title is more like a heading, while the meta description consists of 1 or 2 sentences to explain the topic. In simpler words, meta description is elevator pitch about your webpage, encouraging online searchers to click on your webpage, while conducting online search.
If your title and meta descriptions have continuity, then you’re likely to rank the content.
Here’s an example of a meta description.
When you see the title tag and meta description, you can find the keyword: “social media marketing.”
On the flip side, if you use the phrase “social media marketing” in your title tag, but your meta tag contains the phrase “SEO,” search engines won’t rank you higher because they’re unsure about your content.
It is important to understand that context of your webpage title, meta description relates with your webpage content with the use of keyword in a natural way.
Meta description HTML tag will look like this;
Best practices
- Length – Like headlines, Google will only show the first 150-160 characters of your meta description. Avoid long meta descriptions.
- Relevant description – Your meta tag description should be appropriate and based on the users’ query.
- Skip meta description – If your pages target various keywords, then it’s a good idea to keep meta description focused to the main or primary keyword.
In a WordPress website, putting the meta description is super easy.
Heading tags (H1-H6)
You heading tags helps to structure and organize your content for both the search engines and readers. Similarly most of us do use heading in word documents, to organize various sections you document. Helping the reader to get broad level idea on the topic from its heading.
Best practices
- Don’t use more than one H1.
- Maintain the structure, starting from H1 headings for main topic with other headings like H2,H3 H4, H5, H6 etc. for sub topics.
- Add your related keyword in the headings
- Be consistent with your headings
- Headings are very important to engage your readers on your website. These encourage them to read your content.
HTML code
Header tags helps to structure your content for readers as well as help in improving your organic rankings.
When you search in Google, you’ll see snippets for a topic like this;
The writer of this content organized it into easy-to-read and well-organized headings.
Image alt tags
Images are equally important as content on a webpage. These helps readers to engage with content and helps them build connection while reading content. From SEO prespective, it is very important to optmize webpage images with the alt tags to rank your website.
If you concentrate on writing and ignore optmizing the images, it’s not the right SEO strategy.
People not only search text in Google but also click the images.
SEO for images is totally different than the text because search engines can’t read your images.
So, to rank your images, you need to optimize the alt tags of your images. This will help online searchers, searching the “Images” tab; they’d still find your post.
Best practices
- Be concise and descriptive
- No keyword stuffing
HTML Code
In your WordPress post, click on the right side to add “featured image.”
Here you’ll see “Alt text.” Now you can add, title caption and description.
By doing this, you’ll enhance your chances of organic search.
Schema markup
HTML code
Here’s a sample of HTML code.
Nofollow link tags
If you link to another website or page, it will increase that website’s domain authority. But a nofollow link doesn’t do that.
Neither it’ll help the website’s SEO.
HTML code of nofollow tag looks like this;
If you need a backlink SEO strategy for a website, always go for Dofollow links.
Links and anchor text tags
When you are writing a post, you’re probably going to link to other websites.
But make sure to give credit if you want to include images or statistics from different sources.
Anchor text is a must for SEO endeavors.
HTML tag of anchor text will look like this;
Anchor text is really important for Google to understand what the link or text is about.
In short, If you include the anchor tag of a different website in your relevant niche, it will boost your chances of rank.
Canonical tags
If you think that you don’t have any duplicate web pages, then you’re wrong.
Every site has duplicate web pages.
For human beings, it isn’t easy to understand, but not for search engines.
By using different URLs, a search engine can crawl the same web page.
We see all of these as the same web page, but the search engine sees it as duplicate.
HTML code for canonical tag would be like this;
If you’re not aware of coding, then Software is a good alternative.
But which Software?
There are 2 popular softwares on the WordPress site.
- Yoast SEO
- Moz
Yoast SEO will guide you about SEO title, keyword or meta description length, readability score, and SEO analysis.
Moz with varied SEO tools also helps you to rank your website.
Your SEO strategy is incomplete without optimized HTML tags.
Bottom Line
Ranking of a website doesn’t happen overnight. It needs a lot of patience, hard work, and organized SEO strategies.
Working consistently on a website to improve its rankings by HTML tags raises it to the top.
In simple words, HTML is the language that you use in your website to tell search engines about your content and subject matter.
When you’re not using these tags, then the SEO of your website is going to suffer.
Pay attention to all the following HTML tags,
- The title tag,
- Meta description,
- Header tags,
- Image alt tags,
- Schema markup,
- Nofollow links,
- Anchor text,
- Canonical tags.
It is a wonderful idea to go hand in hand with Software to help you place all of the above tags.
Let me know which HTML tag you will plan for your website’s SEO?
