In this paper I will cover the most important elements each web-master should use on their page. Using special tags will let search engines better understand you page, and users to figure out its contents.

Anchor

Tag <a> in HTML is anchor. If you don't know what it is – maybe you are on the wrong page. You can find out everything in details about the tag at World Wide Web Consortium.

Here are parameters that matters

href =

This attribute specifies the location of a Web resource, thus defining a link between the current element (the source anchor) and the destination anchor defined by this attribute.

rel = link-types

This attribute describes the relationship from the current document to the anchor specified by the href attribute. The value of this attribute is a space-separated list of link types.

Title =

This attribute specified description of the link. When user will move mouse over it – he will see popup – that may help him figure out – does he need to go there or not. There's a though – this parameter helps for promotion – well I'm put and experiment – and have seen no difference. However, it's useful for users. And as you know, you should make pages for users, not for search engines - so it may bring some effect later

Anchor link types

Link types that I use in my code (more can be found on w3.org)

Nofollow

Tells search engines not to go to that web-site, and exclude it from your crawled page. This way you show to SE that this document is not relevant to yours – so you won't face any penalty to giving a link for advertising purposes, etc.

Start

Refers to the first document in a collection of documents. This link type tells search engines which document is considered by the author to be the starting point of the collection.

Next

Refers to the next document in a linear sequence of documents. User agents may choose to preload the "next" document, to reduce the perceived load time.

Prev

Refers to the previous document in an ordered series of documents. Some user agents also support the synonym "Previous".

Contents

Refers to a document serving as a table of contents. Some user agents also support the synonym ToC (from "Table of Contents").

Index

Refers to a document providing an index for the current document.

Help

Refers to a document offering help (more information, links to other sources information, etc.)

Bookmark

Refers to a bookmark. A bookmark is a link to a key entry point within an extended document. The title attribute may be used, for example, to label the bookmark. Note that several bookmarks may be defined in each document.

Start, next, prev, index – should be used to develop strong link structure of web-site. Read once again its description and start using that already.

You know that incoming links from other web-sites are really great for your rating – but before thinking about external links – think of links on your site. If all of your pages will be linked good and each page will have different anchor texts for its link – it will be already very good for rating.

Links

Links are not anchors. These tags are added in the HEAD section, and they describe current document relationships. Some general type of relations (format of Link tag) are described at w3.org

I will describe the most significant

Navigation relationships.

Link tag can help with building strong link structure too, try using that links: <LINK rel="prev" href="previous_page.html">
<LINK rel="next" href="next_page.html">

Note that this may be liked not only by spiders, but by client-browsers that can interpreter this tag in specific maner.

Permalink

A permalink is a URL that points to a specific blogging entry even after the entry has passed from the front page into the blog archives. Because a permalink remains unchanged indefinitely, its use avoids link rot.

Permalinks can be indicated within the HTML of a page so as to allow automated browsing tools to detect the permalink and use it for linking instead of the stated URL. The link element should include the following attributes:

Structured text

Modern search engines have many algorithms of detecting the most significant words on your page, but they can't do that 100% right. That's why you should always highlight the most important words in your text.

EM:

Indicates emphasis.

STRONG:

Indicates stronger emphasis.

DEL:

Defines stricout element. <s> and <strike> elements are not supported in XHTML 1.0 Strict DTD and are deprecated in HTML 4.01.

CITE:

Contains a citation or a reference to other sources.

DFN:

Indicates that this is the defining instance of the enclosed term.

CODE:

Designates a fragment of computer code.

SAMP:

Designates sample output from programs, scripts, etc.

KBD:

Indicates text to be entered by the user.

VAR:

Indicates an instance of a variable or program argument.

ABBR:

Indicates an abbreviated form (e.g., WWW, HTTP, URI, Mass., etc.).

ACRONYM:

Indicates an acronym (e.g., WAC, radar, etc.).

BLOCKQUOTE:

is for long quotations (block-level content)

Q

is intended for short quotations (inline content) that don't require paragraph breaks

Note: these tags shouldn't be treated as visual elements. Their main purpose to highlight the most significant parts of you content. If you use that properly - be sure, search engines won't ignore your very interesting content.