A websites code is what lies underneath all the glamour; it’s what holds everything together. When planning your SEO, correctly structuring your website code is one of the key factors of any website to make sure it ranks well in the search engines. Simply placing your content on a page without knowing your code structure could mean that much of your SEO has been going to waste.

There are many pieces of code which needs to be correctly structured to make sure your SEO efforts are not in vain. Before you plan to create your website, wither you will be coding or outsourcing the design, knowing these correct structure tips will help you in the long run. If you happen to already have your website up and running, there are still ways to tweak and change the structure of your code.

Meta Tags

Within your header contains the meta tags, these lines of code tell the search engine spiders the title, keywords, description and additional information about the content of your pages. Each of the meta tags should be crafted by highly optimized keywords and great descriptions for each page. These meta tags include:

• Title Tag <title>Example</title>
• Description Tag <meta name=”description” content=”A Great Description” >
• Keywords <meta name=”keywords” content=”keyword1, keyword2, etc” >

The title tag is what is displayed at the top of your browser. Search engine spiders read the title and use this information for SEO. Your title tag should be able to tell readers what is the content of your page.

The description of your meta tags reflect a short description of the content of your page. The description tag should be crafted to include your targeted keywords as well making it interesting for people to read and click to your link.

Finally, the keyword tag is used to place keywords that relate to the content of your page. Due to spamming during the early use of the web, search engines generally don’t use keyword meta tags as a ranking factor for SEO. Recently, Matt Cutts of Google has admitted that Google completely no longer uses keywords as a part of SEO.

The Body

Now that you’ve crafted your header information, the next logical step is to make sure you plan and structure your body tags. The most important factor for Search Engine Optimization is the correct use of your header tag, which is generally <H1> or <H2>. The title of your post and content of the page is what goes into these title tags. Search engines use the title tag as one of the main factors for Search Engine Optimization.

One of the most overlooked pieces of code website owners leave out are ‘Title’ and Alt’ tags for links and images. Because search engines cannot identify a picture, it relies on the title and alt tag to gain a bit of knowledge of what the picture contains. Additionally, adding titles and alt tags to your links will help the usability and Search Engine Optimization of your body content.

The Footer

Finally, the footer is the bottom of your page which usually includes links, additional information or any other information that isn’t included in your header or body. Most often, blogs will include a blogroll of other blogs which fit their niche. Because these footer links point outward, unless you have agreed to link sharing these links should be ‘no-follow’.

Although this information may be a bit much if you aren’t used to coding, knowing this information before you plan a website will help make sure your SEO is worthwhile. Correct and structural coding will make sure that your website is optimally viewed by the search engine spiders.