Google says, “Tag, you’re it!”

This article highlights the importance of html tags to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This may seem technical and dry, but it could make the difference between a customer finding your site or your competitor’s site.

A tag, among other things, can make text bold, italic or denote it as a heading. How you use tags to style your website is important to search engines like Google.

If you’ve studied SEO, you know how crucial it is to create keywords for each page of your website. The importance of tags is less well-known. All else being equal, Google will pay more attention to text that is in a heading, bold or italicized. It follows that you want to place keywords inside these tags whenever possible.

Here are a list of tags you could consider using on your own site:

  • Heading 1: <h1>
  • Heading 2: <h2>
  • Heading 3: <h3>
  • Bold: <strong>
  • Italic: <em>

Along with bold and italics, I use Heading 1 (h1) and Heading 2 (h2) for my SEO. You can style them just as you would any other text.

Observe:

h1: Small Business Marketing

h2: Zoo in a Jungle Marketing uncages small business potential.

I only use two levels of headings because the more headings you use, the less important Google will consider them.

A word of caution to those of you eagerly making plans to pepper your pages with headings and emphasis: don’t overdo it! Only use headings sparingly and when appropriate. Heading 1 is fine to use as the title of your page, but Google will ignore your site if you enclose an entire paragraph in an h1 tag. And your human readers may flee if you insist on bolding and italicizing every little thing (after all, the point of SEO is to get actual people to visit your site).

Having trouble? No worries. Feel free to email me with any questions at amanda@zooinajungle.com.

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