Tag Archives: HTML

Formatting HTML Newsletters

28 Sep

The majority of newsletter subscribers opt to have their newsletter formatted in HTML so it’s good to send attractive emails filled with nice graphics and lots of pertinent info. Formatting newsletters in HTML doesn’t have to be a pain. If you are planning on offering a newsletter we recommend that you use a third party company to handle all of your email campaigns.

Aweber

Aweber Communications develops and manages online opt-in email newsletters, follow-up automation, and email deliverability services for small business customers around the world. You can access their website 24/7 to manage and send your newsletters to recipients who have specifically opted in on your website. Use can use their integrated Web Form Generator, with video tutorials, to create unblockable pop-ups or standard forms that are easily installed on your website without programming experience.

Configure unlimited follow up and newsletter messages with name personalization, click thru and open rate tracking, attachments, RSS, and split testing at no additional cost. Messages can include HTML using our 51+ pre-designed templates, or create your own with the integrated editor and images or plain text.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is the leading provider of web-based email marketing software for small to mid-sized businesses and organizations. With their easy-to-use wizard, over 100 eye-catching email templates, list management features, email tracking and reporting, and high deliverability, Constant Contact makes it easy for you to communicate with your customers and visitors – and keep them coming back!

TemplateZone

TemplateZone offers professional email templates so you can easily choose from hundreds of html email templates to customize and send out directly from your computer.

Need help with business and sales letters?

WriteExpress offers a suite of sales and business letter templates you can easily use if you are at a loss for words when writing an email sales letter. They offer 3,001 award-winning business, sales and personal letters, hundreds of additional sales and fundraising letters, plus free bonuses.

Newsletter Formatting Resources

  • Aweber – Control all of your newsletter campaigns with Aweber. Also receive free HTML newsletter templates. Best Value
  • Constant Contact – Do it yourself email marketing – customizable templates – reporting

Proper Use of HTML Tags

23 Sep

HTML tags are many so we will cover the ones used for the purposes of SEO.

Formatting an HTML page for SEO is really pretty simple. The basic HTML tags to use are the h1, h2, h3, alt and strong tags. The h1, h2 and h3 tags are heading tags used for the heading of your page. See the big heading that says HTML Tags at the top of this page? That is the h1 tag in use and it is used for the main heading text of the page. It looks like this <h1>HTML Tags</h1>. It tells the search engines and users exactly the main topic of the page. The h2 and h3 tags can be used for sub headings which would follow lower in the page as seen below.

Proper use of h2 tags

So we started the page with a main heading using the h1 tag followed by a paragraph and then have a sub heading using the h2 tag. H2 tags appear a bit smaller then the h1 tag and so on. H tags go all the way up to h6 but I have never personally used anything beyond h3 and don’t know of anyone else using anything beyond that either. It’s good to keep your pages focused around one main topic and then breaking down the info into sub sections. And this is where you would use the h tags to properly define the hierarchy of sections.

Proper use of h3 tags

Using the h3 tag is not necessary but is used above as an example to show size decrease. Unless you have a lot of information on the page that is broken up into more then 2 sections you can get away with using just the h1 and h2 tags.

Using ALT tags

ALT tags describe images to search engines as well as people with disabilities that use screen readers to describe objects in a browser. If ALT tags are used on images users will know what they are about if they don’t load properly.

the alt tag describes what image is supposed to be here

When images don’t load properly or are seen by search engines and use proper ALT tags this is what they see.

nuvru logo - the alt tag describes what image is supposed to be here

Describing images properly helps users and search engines get a better idea of what your page is about.

It is important to use ALT tags for your navigation graphics. If you use graphics as your main navigation then it is extremely important that you use ALT tags to describe the graphical link. This tells search engines where the link is pointed in turn describing the destination page.

Using the Strong tag

The bold tag used to be <br> but now it is <strong>. Bolding text gives readers a visual cue or visual emphasis when scanning text. It’s plays a role in readability of a web page and should be used diligently. Also, some search engines pay attention to this tag letting them know what words should stand out.

HTML Tag Resources