GA4 Dashboard

HTML and CSS for Marketers (How to Start Using Them Today)

April 16, 2025

Unlock the secret sauce that takes your marketing skills to the next level. Learning HTML and CSS isn’t just about code; it’s about transforming your marketing efforts into well crafted web experiences, attention-grabbing emails, lead-generating landing pages that convert, and more!

Why do marketers need to know HTML and CSS? While it’s not necessary in every marketing position, it’s a good skill to have because you can move your marketing efforts quickly without relying on developers for small changes.

How is HTML and CSS used in marketing? These are just some of the ways HTML and CSS can benefit you as a marketer.

  • Enhancing SEO & Search Visibility

  • Creating High-Converting Landing Pages

  • Email Marketing & Customization

  • Tracking with Google Tag Manager

Enhancing SEO & Search Visibility

Is your website’s online presence falling short of your expectations? Knowing HTML and CSS can improve your SEO strategy in a number of ways.

Structure

Ready to build a website that’s not just visible, but truly understood? HTML and CSS is your opportunity to make impactful changes to your website’s structure that speaks directly to your audience and search engines.

By adding HTML tags, you define the content’s hierarchy – headings, paragraphs, lists, tables – ensuring not only a visually organized website, but also a clearly structured framework. This precise structuring allows search engines to accurately interpret and index your content, ultimately boosting your site’s discoverability and organic reach.

Structure Example

Here’s a quick copy and paste of the above boilerplate code.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang=“en”>
<head>
<meta charset=“UTF-8”>
<meta name=“viewport” content=“width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0”>
<title>Document</title>
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>

Understanding

Think of HTML as your website’s personal storyteller, making sure every visitor and search engine bot gets the full picture.

By using HTML tags to organize your content into clear sections like headings, lists, and paragraphs, you’re not just making your site look good, you’re creating a readable roadmap.
Not only do HTML tags talk to search engines about your content’s purpose, they also make your site a welcoming place for everyone, including those using screen readers. It’s like giving your website a clear voice, so everyone gets the message.

MDN Web Docs has a great page called HTML elements reference that you can use when you’re creating tags. Here are some of the most common tags you’ll run into when it comes to SEO.

  • Title Tags <title>
  • Meta Descriptions <meta description>
  • Header Tags <h1> – <h6>
  • Image Tags <img>
  • Links <a>
  • Table <table>
  • List Tags <li>
  • Canonical Tags <canonical>
  • Robots Meta Tag <meta robots>
  • Structured Data Markup <schema>
  • No Follow Link Tags

These aren’t all the tags but hopefully this gives you an idea of what you can expect and should start to familiarize yourself with regards to SEO.

Readability/accessibility

HTML enhances readability by structuring content in a way that is easy to scan and navigate. By using headings, paragraphs, and lists, it organizes information for both users and search engines. Bullet points improve scannability, while tables help structure data effectively.

Proper HTML usage enhances accessibility, ensuring that screen readers can interpret content correctly, providing a better experience for visually impaired users. Well-formatted text not only improves readability but also keeps visitors engaged and makes websites more inclusive.

How Readability Affects Accessibility & Penalties
Proper HTML structure (headings, lists, paragraphs) ensures screen readers can navigate the page.

  • Readable font sizes and contrast help users with vision impairments.
  • Alt text for images allows visually impaired users to understand visuals.
  • Keyboard navigation support is crucial for users who can’t use a mouse.

There are legal and compliance penalties for websites that aren’t accessible. It’s another reason why being knowledgeable about HTML and CSS can help reduce these types of issues and SEO penalties.

W3C Markup Validator
The W3C Markup Validator helps flag issues with your HTML markup, making it a great tool for beginners to ensure their code aligns with W3C standards.

Keyword optimization

HTML tags help optimize keywords by placing them in titles, subheadings, URLs, alt text, and anchor links, allowing search engines to better understand your content’s relevance. By placing keywords in these tags you also can improve SERP rankings and enhance discoverability by signaling key topics.

How Do You Pick The Right Keywords?
You can use tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to help with your keyword research. If you don’t have the budget for a paid tool, then I highly recommend using Screaming Frog and Google Search Console.

Platforms like Screaming Frog and Semrush can help identify Title Tag issues which is a good starting point for your keyword optimization strategy.

You can also use the Search Engine Results Page (SERPS) to research what others in your industry are using in their Title Tags. Maybe the top 5 results include a year. So now you know it might be a good idea to use a year in your title tag.

Don’t Waste Your Trial Period
Most of these tools come with a free trial period so I would recommend signing up with a strategy in place so you can get the most out of your trial period.

Creating High-Converting Landing Pages

Marketers can take their landing pages to the next level by using their HTML and CSS knowledge to design pages that aren’t just visually appealing but also optimized for performance.

Structure the Page for Clarity and Focus
As we’ve already discussed, using HTML tags and having a clear structure can improve your SEO in a variety of ways.

  • Use clear headings (H1 to H6) to highlight the value prop on your landing page.
  • Structure landing page content with sections to break up information into digestible parts.
  • HTML Layout: Use semantic HTML to make content easy to navigate and ensure it’s accessible for all users.
  • Use CSS to style your content to improve user experience with typography, colors, and responsive design.

Optimizing Call-to-Action (CTA) with CSS
Marketers know that CTAs are crucial for landing pages that are supposed to guide site visitors toward taking a desired action. Whether it’s a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, downloading a resource, or any other action you have for the page.

  • For quick testing: Use Chrome Developer Tools to quickly test what a different color “Submit” button would look like on a landing page
  • Make CTAs stand out: Use CSS to create visually compelling buttons with contrasting colors and bold typography.
  • A/B Testing: Platforms like Unbounce and VWO allow for custom CSS so marketers can A/B test their CTAs.

Email Marketing & Customization

Using HTML in emails gives you the option to customize layouts, use styled typography, add clickable buttons, images, and more. There are easy drag and drop solutions like MailChimp that help you build these HTML emails but knowing how to code can certainly make a difference.

Save Time
From my experience, I’ve noticed having a little HTML and CSS knowledge is a huge time saver when I’m building emails or newsletters. I love the fact that I don’t need to ask a developer to help me with updating an email because I can do it myself in seconds. There’s no wait time or dev cycle, it’s just me and the code!

Position Yourself as an Expert
If you have a bit of coding under your belt, those skills are beneficial to others in a department who may not have the technical acumen to make changes. That means you can position yourself as the go-to-person for issues/updates related to emails – making yourself an irreplaceable team member.

Understand Rendering Across Email Clients
As the go-to-coder on your marketing team, you’ll benefit from understanding how emails are rendered across different email clients. For example, there are certain things that don’t look good on Gmail but look fine on Outlook depending on the device type and email client version.

I’ve used Litmus and Email on Acid to help with rendering and I definitely recommend getting some hands-on experience with these types of tools. They help you visually see how your email is going to look and identify any major errors.

In my experience, every email has its quirks somewhere. To make the best use of your time, I’d recommend reviewing your data and focusing on how your emails look in the email clients your users use the most.

Tracking with Google Tag Manager

Pixels
Have you ever been asked to add a tracking pixel to a website? Tracking pixels like Facebook, LinkedIn, and GA4, all use a small piece of JavaScript code that typically gets added to the <head> or <body> section of your website.

Knowing the basics of HTML, you’ll know exactly where to place it and not have to rely on developers to make the changes for you. Your coding knowledge and experience will give you the confidence in knowing how to keep things moving and start tracking user engagement.

Form Tracking
Marketers can use IDs or classes to build triggers for custom events through GTM. For example, let’s say you want to track form submissions. On the form you could add id=”signup-button” to help you build that tracking. Knowing CSS helps you target elements and accurately track conversions like form submissions, button clicks, and more.

CSS Selectors
Level up your tracking game by using HTML and CSS when working with Google Tag Manager!

In GTM, CSS selectors allow you to target specific HTML elements on your site. So if you want to build a tag that fires when someone clicks a button, you can use a CSS selector for that. Want to track outbound links? You can use CSS selectors for that!

Conclusion

While we covered a lot here, this is just the beginning of your HTML and CSS journey. This isn’t a race and everyone learns at their own pace so just do you!

When I first started I focused mainly on learning HTML, then CSS, then JavaScript, and so on. The W3C Validator, VS Code, accessibility, a lot of that will come with time. It’s all good to know but your main goal should be starting with the basics of HTML and CSS.