HTML is a markup language that forms the basis of most webpages.
It is arguably one of the most fundamental parts of technical SEO.
Using HTML elements, SEO professionals are able to communicate information about the page to users and search bots.
This can help to clarify the importance, nature, and order of content on a page, as well as its relationship to other webpages.
What Are HTML Attributes?
Attributes are additional information added to HTML elements. They sit within the element, such as:
They are values that are used to modify the element, giving additional context about it.
In the case of the HTML tag above, the attribute, rel=”canonical” modifies the link tag to say to the search bots that this URL should be considered the canonical of a set.
Format Of HTML Attributes
HTML attributes consist of a name and a value.
For example, when defining an image, the name “src” is used and the value is the file name of the image. The “alt” attribute specifies an alternative text to show if the image cannot be displayed.
Types Of HTML Attributes
Attributes are usually classified in four ways; required, optional, standard or event.
Required attributes are ones where their absence from a tag means that tag would not function correctly.
Optional ones are, as the name suggests, not required for the tag to work but can be used to specify additional information or behaviour for that tag.
There are attributes that can be used with most HTML elements, and some that are very specific.
For example, the “style” attribute can be used to define the look of an element like the colour or font size. These universal attributes are known as “standard” or “global” attributes.
There are other attributes that can only be used with certain elements. Commonly, ones that are used for SEO will modify a link tag. These are elements like “rel” and “hreflang.”
Event attributes are added to an element to define how that element should behave in response to certain actions like a user mousing over a button. These attributes define how a function should be executed.
For example, an “onclick” attribute would define what a JavaScript function should do when a user clicks a button. These attributes allow developers to create more interactive pages from HTML tags.
Why HTML Attributes Are Important
HTML attributes are important because they allow developers to add additional context and functionality to websites.
They are particularly important for SEO because they give much-needed context to tags. They are critical in how we guide the search bots in crawling and serving webpages.
Attributes allow us to easily prevent the following of certain links, or denote which pages in a set should be served to users in different countries or using other languages.
They allow us to easily signify that a page should not be indexed. A lot of the fundamental elements of technical SEO are actually controlled through HTML attributes.
Common Attributes Used In SEO
1. Name Attribute
The name attribute is used with the tag.
It is essentially a way of specifying to any bots that may visit the page if the following information applies to them or not.
For example, including means that all bots should take notice of the “noindex” directive.
You will often hear this called the “meta robots tag.”
If the following were used , only Google’s bot would need to take notice of the “noindex” directive.
This is a good way of giving commands to some search bots that are not needed for all.
2. Noindex Attribute
The “noindex” attribute is one commonly used in SEO.
You will often hear it being called the “noindex tag,” but more accurately, it is an attribute of the tag.
It’s formulated:
This piece of code allows publishers to determine what content can be included in a search engine’s index.
By adding the “noindex” attribute, you are essentially telling a search engine it may not use this page within its index.
This is useful if there is sensitive content you want to not be available from an organic search. For instance, if you have areas on your site that should only be accessible to paid members, allowing this content into the search indices could make it accessible without logging in.
The “noindex” directive needs to be read to be followed. That is, the search bots need to be able to access the page to read the HTML code that contains the directive.
As such, be careful not to block the robots from accessing the page in the robots.txt.
3. Description Attribute
The description attribute, better known as the “meta description,” is used with the tag.
The content of this tag is used in the SERPs underneath the content of the