Why You Should Know Html Code If You Are Building A Website

Writen by Chris Le Roy

Back 20 years ago when the Internet was just in its infancy, the only way to build a webpage was simply to use notepad, a free text editor supplied with Microsoft Windows. Now as the Internet has become a collage of music, special effects and flash, the art of writing HTML code is slowly being lost to HTML Editors like Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver MX. Yet, whether you like it or not, to be able to effectively build websites you still need to know at least basic HTML Code.

Let me explain …

HTML or Hypertext Markup Language is in all essence the language of the World Wide Web. Without HTML our Internet Browsers like Netscape, Internet Explorer or Firefox would not be able to interpret our webpages. HTML is made up of a series of tags that describe the inner workings and structure of how you want to present your webpages. Now in all seriousness you could survive building webpages without knowing one little bit of HTML but to be truly successful on the web this is not true.

Search engines are now one of the main tools utilised on the web and everyday you see Microsoft's MSN, Yahoo and Google jostling for the number one position in the search engine stakes but as a web programmer being able to position yourself into a top ranking spot is probably one of the most important skills you will need to master. As being in one of the top positions for your keywords means that you will be receiving free focused traffic to your website which is much better than having to pay for it via Google's Adword, Overture and any one of the other text ad based services.

So why is knowing HTML going to help you in getting your website positioned into a top spot in the search engines …

The first thing you need to know is how to correctly format your header tags of your webpage because without properly formatted header tags, the search engines won't know what your sites about and what keywords you wish to associate with the webpage. One of the big issues I have seen with some of the HTML editors is that they don't address this issue of Header tags or in particular meta tags, which means if you are building a website you are already compromising the websites ability to be placed into the right position within search engines.

For example many of the HTML editors will provide you with popup forms that will help you set your meta data for your descriptions and keywords but they miss out other important meta data such as whether the search engines spiders should index all the pages, the language of the webpage, the character set and what type of document you are creating based on the HTML Standard.

PLEASE NOTE: I have substituted the < > tags with [ ] brackets simply because many of the article submission companies and websites will not allow you to lodge articles with HTML Tags in the body of the article. To use the code sample below in your webpages simply replace the [] square brackets with the < > tags

[!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"] [html] [head] [meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us"] [meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"] [meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 6.0"] [meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document"] [TITLE]Your Title Goes Here [/TITLE]

[META NAME="description" CONTENT="Your Description Goes Here"] [META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="Your Keywords Go Here"] [META NAME="robots" CONTENT="index,all"> [/head]

[/html]

One thing I should note is that just because you provide all this information does not mean that -

a) All Search Engines use this information b) You are guaranteed to get a top place in the search engine

But having each of these small elements in your webpage, certainly do when put together makes an improvement in your search engine place. Remember though that every search engine is different and that the algorithms they use for website placement is incredibly complex and certainly a well guarded secret but if you do add these elements at least you will get a few points in the positive direction.

There is another reason for putting this information into your website. Not having some of this information can also affect the ability of a visually impaired person to view your website. This might sound a little strange but visually impaired people have tools that convert screen webpages into brail messages. However, in some cases not including some of the information outlined above in your meta tags like the content language and character set can affect whether their brail software will read your website correctly. So if your customer base is built on say a 30% market of those people who are disabled with visual impairment then you could be costing yourself money.

One of the other key reasons why you should know how to write at least basic html code is to help you build incoming links to your webpages. A technique you can follow to build those incoming links is to write articles that provide information for people about what you do. For example if you owned a Golfing Website that sold all things Golf, then you might consider writing articles on how to select a Golf Club or where the best Golfing Clubs and ranges can be found.

When you are submitting your articles to places like EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com or ArticlesON.com they will ask you to use certain html tags to help accentuate your article. For example generally in the body of your article you can only use things like bold, italics, underline and list items but in other areas like where you put your details you can add things like Hyperlinks and Hypertext. Now in the three article submission sites mentioned before, if you want to add a Hyperlink then you must know your basic HTML code, because they do not build your links for you, you have to write the HTML Tags from scratch.

When you are building your hyperlinks to link back to your webpage, you will want to make sure one two things -

1. The Hyperlink, that is the webpage or website you are linking to contains the keywords in either domain name, folder name or webpage name. 2. Make sure the Hypertext or better known as anchor text uses your keywords as well.

Let us look at a basic example. If I had written a really cool article on a brand new Golf Club that I knew was going to sell millions and had a lot of interest in the market then my link back to the webpage that provides more information on the Golf Club would be built in the way shown below. Let us say the name of the Golf Club is called the Lion Heart X9.

[a href="http://www.GolfProAustralia.com.au/LionHeartX9.htm]Lion Heart X9 Golf Club[/a]

Note -Once again the < > tags have been substituted with [] brackets simply to meet the article submission requirements. You must use the < > bracket tags in your webpage or you webpage will not work.

If you didn't know how to write the hyperlinks in the way shown above and the search engines found your articles on a number of different websites, then they would not be able to give you credit for the links back to your website and again this is going to cost you web traffic.

The bottom line is this. If you want to build serious webpages and sites that are going to make you money, you will definitely need at the very least good basic skills in using and understanding HTML code.

Chris Le Roy is the Managing Director of One-on-One Personal Computer Training. His computer training company provides a range HTML Code Cheat Sheets and Microsoft FrontPage 2003 Cheat Sheets for helping students get to know how to build webpages and the underlying HTML Code. All the Cheat Sheets are available in PDF Downloadable format or a Laminated Format.