HTML for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Monday 28 January 2008We start today our first phase with optimizing HTML code. Before going deeper, we need to make a few reminders about HTML.
HTML, the minimum
These basics are the minimal knowledge required in HTML without which you won’t be able to optimize your web pages. If you already know HTML, you won’t learn anything new here, moreover, you could even find some volontary pedagogic approximations.
What is HTML ?
Each web page you visit over the Internet corresponds to an HTML format file that your browser (Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox or other) receives and has to display. This file in text format (therefore human readable) describes the graphical appearance corresponding to the web page (texts, images, layout, etc…).
For example, if you go to the Amazon homepage, you can view the file your web browser received (right click + View source code in Internet Explorer). You will get the following text (HTML code) in your notepad, corresponding to the Amazon homepage.
This description is done in HTML. HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is a standard language based on tags (mainly for formatting). There are tags to display text, to put it in bold, to insert images, etc… Tags are always shown between rafters <name of the tag>. The formatted text is almost always framed by an opening tag and a closing tag.
For example,
In order to show the text “mp3 player” in bold, use the “b” tag (b stands for bold) as follows,
<b>mp3 player</b>
Another example, in order to display the text “sport car” in a first level heading, use the “h1” tag (h stands for heading) as follows,
<h1>sport car </h1>Structure of an HTML page
An HTML page is divided into two parts : a head and a body. In the head, there are tags which provide general informations about the document to display. In the body, there is the document to display and its formatting defined by specific font tags.
This is the structure of an HTML page,
<HTML>
<HEAD>
... Head tags -> general informations...
</HEAD>
<BODY>
... Body tags -> web page an its formatting...
</BODY>
</HTML>Going deeper
These are basic knowledges to understand before learning about HTML code optimization of web pages. Nevertheless, it is strongly recommended to know a bit more about HTML.
You will find great tutorials about HTML on HTML Dog (http://htmldog.com/guides/htmlbeginner/). You should learn quite quickly from there.
To go deeper in the matter, it could be interesting to read the HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.1 standards.
