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Is your HTML code valid for the search engines?
You have placed your most important keywords in your web
page title. You have the optimal keyword density on your web
page. Your link popularity score is shooting through the roof.
You have added lots of content to your web site. You have
double-checked your robots.txt file. You have read the past
70 newsletter issues and you're becoming the status of an
search engine optimization expert in your company. :)
In spite of everything - your web site is still ranked nowhere
at all. Then it comes to your mind... are the search engines
actually able to read my web pages at all?
Web pages are written in a special language called HTML.
Like any language, HTML is constantly changing although there's
the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C, for short) which is the
governing body that establishes what is valid HTML code and
what is not.
Search engine crawler programs obey the HTML standard. They
are only able to index your web site if it is compliant to
the HTML standard. If there's a mistake in your web page code,
they stop crawling your web site and probably forget what
they've collected so far.
Fortunately, the W3C offers a free online service that can
check the HTML validity of your web pages. You can find it
here.
Another benefit of writing clean HTML standard compatible
code is what the W3C calls "interoperability". It
means that valid code is automatically cross-browser compatible,
i.e. it works in different web browsers on different operating
systems (although the actual display of the HTML code depends
on the web browser).
To help search engine crawler programs to index your web
site, you should also follow these tips:
- Use simple tables in your HTML code and avoid overly nested
tables, i.e. tables within tables within tables. Most HTML
errors can probably be found in this area.
- Move long JavaScript code to an external .js file. Search
engines cannot read JavaScript code.
- Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to remove excessive usage
of HTML font tags. Replacing font tags throughout a page
with styles saves a significant amount of code and makes
it easier for search engines to index your web page.
If you use Cascading Style Sheets to make your web pages
smaller, make sure that they are also technically correct.
Fortunately, the W3C also offers a free
CSS validation service.
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