Writing articles on subjects that you are familiar with is really simple. There are now literally hundreds of thousands of people writing articles for submission to article directories all over the internet and for you to have your documents really stand out with the article directories, you must know seven key HTML tags or your articles are just going to be ignored.

Nobody likes to read an article that is just plain straight text. Even the newspapers try to jazz up their material with certain types of formatting and this is also true for those people who are writing articles for article directories or online articles. If you are submitting articles to online directories there are seven key HTML tags you need to know to ensure your articles are both attractive and interesting to read.

When I first started to write this article, I had envisaged there being eight HTML tags however I have dropped one of the tags because using this tag will bring only heartache, pain and millions of spam a month. The HTML tag I do not recommend you use is the "mailto" command which you can use with the "a href" function. The reason I don't recommend that you use the mailto command is that email addresses put on webpages on the internet can easily be harvested by our spam buddies (buddies not!) and then sold off to many others so I strongly discourage anyone to use this technique. Unless you really do like getting a couple of thousand emails a day and as one person who does get that volume, it really is not any fun.

Okay on to the Seven HTML Tags you need to know ...

Starting off, I have substituted the < > for [ ] brackets because when you submit these articles to the article directories quite often they do not like HTML tags except for those below and they sometimes remove all the HTML tags all together. Further to this, if I used these tags as shown below, they will actually work rather than showing the tags. Okay so lets begin ...

HTML Tag 1 -

The first tag you need to learn is the bold tag. This tag allows you to accentuate text by making it bold. To make text bold you simply encapsulate the tag with the following -

This text will be bold

The text between the closing and opening HTML tags will be bold. When working with this HTML tag you must have the closing tag or all your text will be bold.

Note - When typing the HTML tags in substitute the square brackets [ ] with < > greater than and less than brackets.

HTML Tag 2 -

The second common HTML tag you must know is the italic tag. When I am writing articles I try to combine both the Italics tag and the Bold tag in the first paragraph of all my articles. I use this to accentuate that first article. To make text italics you simply encapsulate the italics tag using the following -

This text will be italics

HTML Tag 3 -

The third formatting tab you need to know is the Underline tag. This tag simply allows you to underline text. To underline text use the Underline tag - This text will be underlined


HTML Tag 4 -

The fourth HTML tag you need to know is the Bullet Point tag. This tag is similar to Bullet Points in Microsoft Word except that in HTML there are only four core types. To create a Bulleted list use the following -

[ul]

• My First Bullet Point
• My Second Bullet Point
• My Third Bullet Point

[/ul]

You would expect to see something like -

    * My First Bullet Point
    * My Second Bullet Point
    * My Third Bullet Point

HTML Tag 5 -

We have looked at the fourth HTML tag which allows you to create a bulleted list. The fifth HTML tag is to create a numbered list -

[ol]

• My First Numbered Point
• My Second Numbered Point
• My third Numbered Point

[/ol]

The numbered list would look like this -

   1. My First Numbered Point
   2. My Second Numbered Point
   3. My third Numbered Point



HTML Tag 6 -

The sixth HTML tag you need to get to know is the link tag. This tag allows you to create hyperlinks and hypertext back to you website. This HTML tag is particularly important if you are trying to build inbound links to your website.

The link tag is written in this way -

[a href="http://microsoftofficespecialist.1-on-1.biz/directmarketing/default.asp"]How to Profit with a Direct Sales Website[/a]

This link tag will look something like this -

How to Profit with a Direct Sales Website

When you are writing for ezine articles you can develop your articles to include html links but sometimes, some ezine directories do not allow the link tag in the main body of the article. The other thing to consider is to use Hypertext in your Hyperlink. The Hypertext you use such as "How to Profit With a Direct Sales Website" should include the keywords you want search engines to index for your webpages. If you do not do this you will be throwing away opportunities for inbound links that will help improve your website position within the search engines.

HTML Tag 7 -

The last tag you need to know is the
 tag. This tag allows you to insert a carriage return. The one thing about the
 tag is that not all ezine articles will allow the use of the
 tag. It is very important that you read the conditions of submitting articles to each Ezine directory as some Ezine directories have a rule that if you do one thing wrong your id or username is out for good.

Knowing these seven html tags will help you format your ezine articles so that they will stand out and be more attractive and easier to read for your users. HTML Tag 6 will also help you in building inbound links to help build the popularity element to your website, which in turn will help build your position within popular search engines like MSN, Yahoo and Google.


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About the Author

© Chris Le Roy I have written a range ofHTML Code Cheat Sheets and Microsoft FrontPage 2003 Cheat Sheets.