HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and it has been around since 1993. A conceptual knowledge of HMTL can help you to better understand the capabilities of websites and how they work. The benefits include the ability to fix problems within web pages and e-newsletter creation platforms such as MailChimp.
HTML can be learnt, for free, via W3Schools.
It is the most commonly used computer language used within websites. HTML provides a standardised approach for tagging text files in order to control and create fonts, colours and design within web pages.
If you visit your website and right click with your mouse, a popup should appear. Choose ‘View source’ (or similar) and you should find that a new browser window opens up. You are looking at the HMTL for your website.
If you are using a Windows computer, use ‘Control + F’ and search for ‘Title’. This will show you the Title Tag for the web page (i.e your website home page). Bearing in mind that Google reads Title Tags, this is an important item to get right and we discuss this further within The Marketing Compass SEO Course.
Do not be overwhelmed by the seeming complexity. HTML is a tagging language. It uses pairs of commands. For example, ‘start bold’ and then ‘finish bold’, or ‘start a headline’ and ‘finish the headline’. These commands are contained within angle brackets which look like this: <>
HTML tells a website browser, such as Google Chrome, how to display headlines, text, images, videos etc within a webpage.
For more information about HTML visit Wikipedia and the WHATWG Community.