Now, a meta tag is a type of tag that provides web browsers and search engines with technical information on a web page, such as description, keywords, document encoding, bot indexing rules, and so on. Note that all meta tags must be placed inside the document’s tag. An interesting fact is that while the description and keywords are meta tags , the title is a tag .

Lastly, an attribute is an additional bit of information about a tag or meta tag. They represent special words that are used inside the start tag to have control over an element’s behavior. 

For example, earlier on in this post, we mentioned a tag that adds images to web pages. Well, its alt attribute displays an alternative image title if the image itself can’t be displayed for any reason.

How tags differ from attributes

Since a lot of people use the terms “tag” and “attribute” practically synonymously, let’s take a moment to get the terminology straight.

Here’s an example of an HTML element format that breaks the element down into three parts:

																					

																						Welcome to my blog on SEO
																					
																				

In this example, “

” opens the tag, “Welcome to my blog on SEO” is the content of the tag, and

The HTML element in the example above is a header that is used as a visible title on a web page to introduce content about search engine optimization. Now, let’s draw the distinction.

While tags must have the start and close elements to function properly, attributes don’t and they are added to HTML elements as modifiers, for example:

In this example, rel= and href= are attributes of the tag.

Note that there are also empty elements, like
, which do not have any content or end tag to them.

Why users and search engines need tags

Now that we have a clear understanding of tags and attributes, let’s discuss why search engines, browsers and users need them. First off, Google uses meta tags with the goal of obtaining information on a page’s content and, ultimately, including it in the search results.

In fact, the snippet is direct confirmation of this since it’s made up of the title tag and description meta tag . However, if the page’s title and description are set up incorrectly (as in are misleading, overspammed with keywords, etc.), Google will automatically replace them with more appropriate text from the page content.

Google’s Search Console Help Center has a list of every meta tag supported by the search giant. So, if you feel like you want to dig deeper into every HTML tag, be sure to check it out.

Tags help browsers read page information. That way, texts, images and links can be displayed exactly the way they are indicated in the HTML code. Can you imagine if users had to visually fish out the site’s content out of all that HTML code?

Now that we’ve covered all the HTML basics, let’s get to the good stuff: tags and attributes useful in search engine optimization.

3 fundamental HTML tags

If you want to create a web page that is useful to people and, more importantly in the context of this article, to search engines, there are three key HTML tags you must include.

The tag points out that a page is a web page

The tag is the very first tag you put up on your web page code. What it does is introduce the page to search engines as being a web page.

Note that although the tag isn’t an HTML tag per se—which is why it doesn’t have any attributes—it provides vitally important information to browsers that lets them know what type of document to expect to find on the page and how it must be displayed.

Here’s an example of the code in use:

																					
																						
																					
																					
																						
																							
																							
																							
																						
																						
																							The content of the document
																							

																								
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When used properly, the browser will understand that the web page was built on HTML. Ultimately, it will have no problem processing the code and displaying the page as intended.

The tag contains page metadata

The tag introduces the very first web page section and contains information on the page that isn’t displayed by browsers. I want to point out that it’s important to know that the tag houses some of the most key SEO tags.

The element serves as a container for metadata—as in data about the HTML document that isn’t displayed on the page—and goes between the tag and the tag. As a rule of thumb, metadata defines the title of the document, its character set, styles, scripts, and so on.

The tag can contain such HTML elements as , , ,

This is a heading

This is a paragraph.

Once you run the code, you’ll see this:

As you can see in the example above, the tag contains such metadata as the title of the document—which isn’t visible on the page—but it can contain various elements that provide data on the page. 

On top of that, HTML Global Attributes that can be used with any HTML element are also supported by the tag.

The tag defines the page’s main content

The tag defines the body of the document and acts as a container for information on the page intended for the eyes of your visitors. I am of course referring to the text, images, and videos you put up on your web page for everyone to see.

To elaborate, the tag holds all of the contents of an HTML document, including headings, paragraphs, multimedia, hyperlinks, tables, lists, and so on. Basically, everything the human eye can see on a web page is housed in the tag, which, by the way, there can only be one of.

Here’s what the HTML code looks like:

																																						

																																							
																																								

																																								
																																									

																																									  
																																									
																																									

																																									
																																									
																																								
																																								

																																								

																																								
																																									
																																										

																																										  
																																										

																																											This is a heading
																																										

																																										

																																										  
																																										

																																											This is a paragraph.
																																										
																																										

																																										

																																											
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Once you run the code, you’ll see this:

Unlike the previous example, in this case we can actually see the HTML elements that are defined within the tag:

and

.

The tag supports HTML Global Attributes that can be used with any HTML element. Moreover, it also supports HTML Event Attributes that let events trigger actions in browsers, similar to clicking on an element in JavaScript.

HTML tags useful in SEO and their attributes

And now, on to the other HTML tags that can help your SEO.

As we’ve already touched on, tags can tell browsers and search engines everything they need to know in a language they can understand, like how the page should be treated, what it’s about and what its purpose is. 

The only trick is knowing how to correctly say what you want to say. The bottom line is if you use them in the right way, your website promotion and SEO efforts will significantly benefit. 

1) The

This is a heading

This is a paragraph.

When you run a similar code on a published page, you’ll see this:

Interestingly enough, since the