Every web page created has a few common parts. To properly optimize any page an understanding of these parts is important. Here is what a general web page looks like in HTML. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the language that every web page is made out of. Knowing what each does will help you as you optimize your pages. Each page page has a Head and Body Section, Meta Data, text, headings, and links.
<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>This is my title</TITLE> <META name="keywords" content="Westwood homes, Westwood condos, real estate NJ">
<META name="description" content="Real Estate in Westwood, New Jersey. Search for homes in Bergen County"> </HEAD> <BODY> <H1>This is the Heading</H1> This is text that people can see when the page is viewed in their web browser. Note that the title appears in the colored bar at the top of the window. The Meta keyword and Meta description tags are not visible.
<A HREF="my-url-keyword-here.htm">This is the visible link text</A>
</BODY>
</HTML>
So now let's examine the parts:
Page Parts:
- Head - The area on the top of your document where the Title and META tags are used.
- Title - The <TITLE> tag of your Web page is probably the most important HTML tag on your page. All the search engines consider the keywords in the title tag and generally give those keywords relevance in their ranking system. Many search engines use the HTML <TITLE> tag as the title of your page in the search results that appear to the user. What this means to you is that this HTML tag must not only work to your advantage for keyword scoring but also must be compelling to the reader.
- Keywords - The purpose of this tag is to define what keywords apply to your page. A very limited number of search engines will use this tag today, and those that do often do not consider it very important. However it is still a good idea to include your keywords anyway. Just don't spam your keywords.
- Description - The text found in the META Description tag will be displayed to the user in the search results for many engines. Therefore, it pays to write a good description so that you not only rank well, but so people will actually click on your link once they see it.
- Body - The body defines the documents' body. This section contains all the contents of your document (like text, images, colors, graphics, etc.).
- Heading Tag - Heading tags are usually displayed using a larger size of the default font. There are five levels of heading, each using a slightly smaller font size. H1 being the biggest down to H5.
Why Use Heading Tags?You may be wondering why heading tags are necessary at all. You may be thinking you could achieve the same results by just enlarging the font. Here are some things to consider: A) Heading tags will be recognized by browsers which don't recognize style sheets (or use a user-defined style sheet). B) Heading tags are used by some search engines to identify words which are more important than the rest of the page text. The theory is that headings will sum up the topic of the page, so they are counted as important keywords.<h1>Heading 1</h1> Heading 1 <h2>Heading 2</h2> Heading 2 <h3>Heading 3</h3> Heading 3 <h4>Heading 4</h4> Heading 4 <h5>Heading 5</h5> Heading 5 - A HREF - In HTML you use the <A> tag to hyperlink to another web page. In terms of a good web page how and where you place this link is important. Linking keywords to specific SEO pages are your site is a good practice or linking your keywords to other outside web pages. So if you link this keyword "Westwood Home Trenads" to a page on your website that talks about the housing market in Westwood you are making a connection between your keywords and relevant information on your website. If you name the page you are linking to westwood-home-trends.htm you are further defining to a search engine how relevant the page is and also describing via the page name what the page is.
All of this information might be a bit daunting but keep it in mind the next time you develop your next web page. A properly organized page not only is good for SEO, it also better organizes your website in general and makes for a better user experience.
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