Essential HTML Skills for Article Authors: 7 Tips

Many successful authors close their minds to learning HTML because they think they don’t need to know. I have been in internet technology, marketing and writing for over a decade and I also closed my mind to learning HTML … until earlier this year. My thinking was that HTML coders only make $ 8-10 per hour and why would I want to learn a skill that I can outsource to someone who specializes in HTML coding?

Guess what? You don’t need to learn more than 15 minutes of HTML knowledge to significantly improve the quality of your articles. In today’s issue, I’ll show you 7 easy-to-learn basic HTML skills that can help any article author create more engaging articles before the day is out.

The 7 “MUST KNOW” HTML article author skills include how to format a URL or email address, how to enhance your text with BOLD, ITALICS, or the UNDERLINE font attribute, and how to set up a bulleted or numbered list in HTML.

1. How to make a URL / website “linkable”:

   This:

   http://EzineArticles.com/

   … will create this: http://EzineArticles.com/

   Just replace your website address with the code above and now you know how to “link” a website address. Some like to create anchor text links. Here is the code to create links from keywords:

   EzineArticles

   … will create this: EzineArticles

   One note: use anchor text links * sparingly * when submitting articles to directories, as some have limitations on the number of times the same URL can be linked. For example, with EzineArticles.com, you are only allowed to have one URL in a certain article that is the same and your article could be rejected if it has two links to the same URL, regardless of whether you linked it as the first one. and / or the second example above.
2. How to make your email address “linkable”:

   This:

   <a target="_blank" href="mailto:youraddress@your-domain-name.tld" rel="noopener">youraddress@your-domain-name.tld</a>

   … will create this: [email protected]

   One note: it is never a good idea to put your email address in your article because your email address will be harvested by spammers who use web email extractor bots to crawl the internet. Better to link to your contact information if necessary.

3. How to do something bold:

   This:

   <b>Make my words bold</b>

   … will create this: Make my words bold

4. How to do something ITALIC:

   This:

   <i>Italicize my words</i>

   … will create this: Italicize my words

5. How to do something UNDERLINED:

   This:

   <u>Underline my words</u>

   … will create this: Underline my words

6. How to make a bullet list:

   This:

   </p> <ul>
   </p> <li>First bullet</li> <p>
   </p> <li>Second bullet</li> <p>
   </p> <li>Third bullet</li> <p>
   </ul> <p>

   … will create this:

   • First bullet
   • Second bullet
   • Third bullet

7. How to make a numbered list:

   This:

   </p> <ol>
   </p> <li>First point</li> <p>
   </p> <li>Second point</li> <p>
   </p> <li>Third point</li> <p>
   </ol> <p>

   … will create this:

   1. First point
   2. Second point
   3. Third point

By opening your mind to allow yourself to learn the 7 Essential HTML Tips for Previous Article Authors, you can improve the quality of your articles immediately.