So you are ready to launch a small business web site and have read up on all of the critical factors that go into the site. You know all about keywords and their criticality to your site. There is a full grasp of the aesthetic elements of your site. Now what exactly is all of this discussion about HTML code, tags, and other essentials in the creation of your small business web site?

HTML code is the backbone of how the graphical web browser is going to display your website to the end user. This code can simply make or break your website in the viewer’s eyes. If your HTML code is not correct the viewer utilizing an alternative browser to your test browser may see nothing but gibberish. If your HTML code is not clean the search engine spiders will simply choke when it tries to read this code and leave your pages without fully indexing it.

Search engine indexing is the critical part that you are after with your website. If you are looking to generate any traffic via the Internet search engines then you are going to have to have your site indexed.

In the indexing of your site the search engines use several key elements to rank them. One of the elements is the keyword density of each of your web pages. Keywords are just what you remember from those days in the library looking at hardbound books. Keywords are the three to five words and phrases that are used predominantly on each of your pages.

Keywords also must correspond to the tags that you have on your pages. Tags are manually placed items in the HTML code to attempt to enable the search engines to more easily index your web pages. There are two specific types of tags that you are going to be really critical in observing and making sure they are correct.

The first of these tags are the meta-tags that you will find at the top of the HTML code of your page. If you use a visual website creator you simply need to look at the HTML code tab to view your tags. When doing this on a specific page make sure that your meta-tags directly refer to your keywords that are contained on the page. These tags are not viewable directly by the website viewer; however every search engine crawler will view these tags and compare them to your website for validation.

The second of the tags is called an alt-tag and is placed where you have a picture or image file on the website. The alt-tag is your way of telling the search engines exactly what the picture is about. You can add an image to your page without this tag however you will miss on the added benefit of getting a few extra keyword rich areas onto your page. If you have a website about flooring and have a page concerning a specific brand; make sure that the alt-tag of the picture mentions that brand. It is a simple thing to do and critical to your site.

Lastly make sure that your picture and image sizes are minimized for the web viewer; slow load speeds will kill the viewership of your site. Nobody wants to wait while a five megabyte picture of an inch by and inch loads. While this size is perfect for your printing purposes it is too large for the web.

These are just a few of the essentials that your small business website will contain. Making sure each of these is correct will ensure that your viewer and the search engines have an easy and enjoyable time when visiting your small business website.