The word “coding” can send many marketers fleeing in fear.
When it comes to creating attention-grabbing Facebook ads or writing a top-quality blog post, we’re fine.
But, coding??
Absolutely not.
That’s best left to the in-house IT guys who’ve been studyingComputer Science for decades. . .right?
Wrong.
Bear with us here.
You probably know that blogs and the web pages that make up your site are important pieces of an SEO marketing strategy.
Well, one of the best ways to benefit from these is to know how to write, tweak, and enhance them using HTML code.
It’s important to understand that many facets of the digital marketing world utilize HTML.
So, becoming familiar with basic HTML tags and answering the questions of what is HTML and how is it used can boost your marketing efforts.
Keep reading to find out what is HTML code and why it’s important for more than just the IT guys.
What is HTML?
HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language.
In technical terms, it is a standardized system that is utilized for tagging text files to achieve things like font, color, graphic, and hyperlink effects on web pages.
Another way to define what is HTML code is that it’s a computer language used for documents that a web browser displays.
Essentially, HTML is the skeleton of most web pages.
And, because search engines pick up on the signals of your source code, HTML plays a significant role in SEO marketing success.
How to Use HTML Code
The purpose of HTML code is to give your web pages and blog posts organization and formatting.
Without it, there’s often a giant chunk of text without any bolded, italicized, underlined, or even spaced out words.
Here’s an old-school way to think about what is HTML code: It’s like what Microsoft Word did for your essays and reports back in middle and high school.
In other words, using HTML is what organizes and formats your written text.
This then enables visitors to easily read and understand your content.
As a webpage creator or a blog writer, there may be times where the pre-existing post formatting requires adjustments.
In order to be able to make these changes, you should know the exact code that you need to adjust in order to make the right kind of alterations.
That’s where knowing how to use HTML comes in.
Without the know-how of this programming language, it’s easy to mess up the entire code, leading to a ruined web page.
With so much content involved in a good SEO strategy, it’s essential for your audiences and Google to be able to easily read that material.
Using HTML for marketing means breaking this content down into easily digestible, crawlable pieces.
Examples of Basic HTML Tags
The tags used for HTML are primarily inserted in the beginning and end of a sentence.
It is best to think of these tags like a sandwich.
Let’s say you wanted to insert a paragraph in a particular location within your content.
You would use the <p> tag in the beginning of your paragraph and the </p> tag at the end of your paragraph.
To create headings for a body of text, you would use the <h1> tag at the beginning of the heading and the </h1> tag at the end of the heading.
Remember, these are just some examples of basic HTML tags.
There are a plethora of HTML tags and code that are available based on your needs and skillset.
It’s a good idea to take the time to learn different basic HTML tags and how to effectively use them for different commands.
For example, things like attributes, quotations, links, tables, and lists are all options of how to use HTML for more readable content.
The more organized and easy-to-follow body of text that you have, the better that both people and Google can read it.