Article on Underused HTML tags

In a recent posting on the SpiderWritingSEO Blog Bill Marshall discussed the HTML tags that are most oftenly misused in web pages. HTML coding, and validation, is something Bill thrives on. I should know I worked at the desk next to him at Oyster Web for a year or so. I learned a lot! Maybe my coding doesn't show it :) This article is a response to this articles and looks at tags that you can use to help search engines rank your pages more effectively.

HTML Tags - Acronym

The acronym tag is a useful little used tag that helps search engines, and users, understand the meaning of acronyms. A pretty nifty little tag. Espescially useful for optimizing technical websites where you refer to acronyms in the body content. If these arent well known its useful to use this tag as mousing over the tag lets user see what the full meaning of the word is. By using it you can help contextualise little used acronyms for search engines. For example :

• SEO is an acronym of 'Search Engine Optimisation' - but you just want to use the word SEO in your body content use the convention <acronym title="Search Engine Optimisation">SEO</acronym> and you get <acronym title="Search Engine Optimisation">SEO</acronym>.
• PPC is an acronym of 'Pay Per Click' use the convention <acronym title="Pay Per Click">PPC</acronym> and you get <acronym title="Search Engine Optimisation">SEO</acronym>.

HTML Tags - Abbreviation

Like the acronym this is used for abbreviation terms simply use the convention <abbrev title="Full Term">Abbreviated Term</abbrev>.

HTML Tags - Dictionary Lists

Google has a neat little feature where it will produce definitions of terms if requested. Simply query Google with the advanced operator 'define:term' to get and answer. For example define:black hat seo will give you a list of definition of what black hat seo is.

The terms that are returned are from pages that use the Dictionary list set of HTML tags. simply code up your dictionary list using the convention :

<dl>

<dt>Dictionary Term</dt>

<dd>Dictionary Definition</dd>

<dt>Dictionary Term</dt>

<dd>Dictionary Definition</dd>

<dt>Dictionary Term</dt>

<dd>Dictionary Definition</dd>

</dl>

This is not an automatic way into the definition index but it will seperate out and help you define any lists that you are using for contextual , useful user content in areas such as glossaries.

HTML Code - Entity Coding

Not all visible characters are simple to show onscreen but these are defineable within the HTML language. To get some of the lesser used characters it is possible to use the entities defines within the character set to get these characters to display. People often misuse the ampersand character ,&, and monetray symbols such as £ and €. For a full list of these entities see places such as W3 Schools or W3 for a far more indepth explanation of entities that are useable.

List of Articles on Ethical Search Engine Optimization

: Hotel Industry Booking Study :: The Horror of Site Submit Pro :: What do you need from Your Site? :
: What is Page Rank? :: Page Rank is Dead - Myth or Reality :: The Replacement for Page Rank? :
: Latent Semantic Indexing :: Using Latent Semantic Indexing :: Robots.txt :
: Writing a robots.txt file :: Server Company Link Request :: Duplicate and Near Duplicate Content :
: Web Site Spiderability :: Big Daddy - the new face of Google :: Page Hijacking and 302 redirects :
: To Submit to Search Engines or not to Submit to Search Engines That is the Question? :: Know Your Customer to Know your User :: Black Hat SEO - Dont Do it! :
: April Fools in Search Engine Land :: Search Engines and Menus :: High Rankings - How do Search Engines fit into Your Business? :
: Google - Da Vinci Code the Game :: Removing the ODP description from your MSN listing :: Viewing the Google index from different Geographic Positions :
: Underused HTML Tags :: Company Law Amendment :

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