HTML for Marketers 101- Very Simple SEO Basics

I often get questions from friends and peers about how to easily boost a site's search engine optimization and basic HTML strategies are the first thing that come to my mind.


Without getting all complicated, start with title and meta tags. Not sure what these are? Click on the View tab in your browser and select the View Source option.  The image below is a screen shot of the title and meta tags for target.com:

Here is what this HTML looks like in Google's search results:

Title tags are what appear at the top of a search results so it is important that they encompass the most strategic keywords to describe your site. The better the terms in your HTML title tag match to the key terms your target audience searches for the better the likelihood that they will find your site in their search results.

• It is important to remember to limit the length of title tags to 65 characters or less. This is the amount of room that search engines will  allot for a single title so its best to keep it concise. (different search engines vary on exactly how many characters but I stick to 60 to keep it safe when possible.

Meta Tags should be created for every unique page on a website. This peice of HTML helps search engine crawlers index your site's information more easily, making your site available to potential visitors faster (or thats the idea anyway). Meta descriptions enclose a short, keyword rich summary of what appears on a particular page. This description appears in search results directly beneath the Title Tag (described above). 

• The general rule of thumb is to keep meta tags 160 characters or less, but there doesn't seem to be much proof that a longer meta will actually hurt a page's SEO.

Often, dense websites do not contain meta descriptions for every single page because it can be tedious. 

When no HTML tag is provided, search engines will crawl a page and basically throw in the most frequent terms from its content. Much debate about the pros and cons of this have been discussed in great detail in the marketing world-- seems that the best approach is a trial and error. If a page is not performing as well as expected, try optimizing its title tags and meta tags with better keywords.

For more on HTML rules for better SEO check out Internet Guru Rand Fishkin's post. I always look to his blog for professional tips.