The Art of Optimizing Content (HTML Tags and Text)
Now that you have an understanding of optimized URLs and choosing keywords, we will move on to optimizing the heart of your content. There are numerous factors that play a role in having content which is search engine friendly. Search engine optimization relies primarily on your content. There is nothing better than having high quality original content. After you have created original content, you should optimize how you mark-up your content using HTML/XHTML.
One thing that I have started to realize is websites designed using XHTML and CSS are more effective than generic HTML with table based layouts for showing up in search engines. Why? There is a simple answer: it takes less html to code a site using xhtml and css. With an XHTML website, the html is simply used to markup your content, and all of the design is provided by the CSS. If possible use XHTML and CSS over table based HTML, you’ll be glad that you did.
Achor Text ‚Äì Achor text refers to the clickable text of a hyperlink. When you create a link (e.g. Nick O’Neill) the text that you put between the tags is very important. One way of thinking of google is as a democratic search engine. Every link that you place, is a vote for the page that you are linking to. So the link that I just created is a vote for my name, for this page. I would not suggest browsing around the web carlessly (or targeting) specific places to put links that will link back to your site. Rather, creating useful links internally is very useful. Make sure that all of your links contain good descriptions of the pages that they link to. Also, if you are using images as links, place good descriptions in the alt propery of the tag.
Heading Tags (H1 through H6) – Heading tags are used to provide emphasis to certain text on your page. If you emphasize important phrases (keywords) on your page, your page will rank higher. Do not get too carried away with this.
In summary, make your code easy to read using XHTML and CSS. There is a great article about the shift from regular HTML to XHTML and CSS at A List Apart. Use descriptive anchor tags on your site, and finally, use heading tags to emphasize important text on your page.