For every search, the Google algorithm checks which webpages are most relevant for the keywords entered. This includes examining to which extent keywords occur in important content elements of every webpage. That is why these content elements – actually the html tags or their components – should get extra attention.
Content elements, ranked from very important to less important:
- Title tag: title of the webpage, appears in the browser and in the Google search results.
- Meta description: short description or summary of the content, appears in the Google search results if sufficiently relevant.
- Headers: titles and subtitles in the text of the webpage.
- Body: the actual text content of the webpage.
- Links: external links – to other websites – and internal links – to other pages of the same website – on the webpage.
- Alt-information: text information that is linked to images, videos or other non-textual items on the webpage.
- Bold: words and/or text fragments on the webpage that are highlighted or given a special layout, e.g. bold, italic, underscore.
- Small: words and/or text fragments on the webpage that are understated, i.e. reduced in size compared to ordinary text.
- Meta keywords: list of relevant keywords that compose part of the content of the webpage.
Next blog post: the title tag