OPTIMIZED & VALID HTML CODE: BASICS
Clean & Valid HTML Code Is Important Both for Your
Visitors
& Search Engine Indexing
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is "the coded
format language used for creating hypertext documents on the World Wide
Web and controlling how Web pages appear." (Google Web Definition)
HTML includes set of tags and rules (conforming to SGML) for developing
hypertext documents. An HTML file/hypertext document is a text file made
up of HTML elements. HTML elements are defined using HTML tags that tell
the Web browser how to display the page. Tags can have attributes. Attributes
can provide additional information about the HTML elements on your page.
There are also certain tags of your HTML code, especially in your BODY
section, that can contribute to achieving higher search engine placements,
if optimized for target phrases. Although optimizing META tags is also
important, the key to effective search engine optimization / marketing
is optimizing your BODY section content, visible to website users,
and NOT optimizing META tags or any invisible text.
Each impact is different but rather small. Nevertheless, numerous incremental
impacts should lead to significant improvement in your website overall
visibility and positioning on search engines. Choose the ones that
would be most helpful to your target audience, and NOT just to boost your
search engine rankings.
The most important SEO principle is to use HTML tags
properly, optimize them logically and sparingly, and NEVER spam the search
engines.
Clean & valid HTML code is important both for your visitors and
search engine indexing. Avoiding HTML errors, optimizing and validating
HTML code to the W3C standards:
- ensures that your HTML code conforms to the World Wide Web Consortium
recommendations for HTML syntax;
- decreases the likelihood of having users experience problems when
viewing your website;
- makes file sizes smaller and more easily understood by search engine
spiders, thus making you website easier to index;
- is the minimal condition to achieve high rankings - without being
properly indexed, your website could not rank high across the search
engines;
- plays important part in achieving website relevancy, which is the
ultimate goal in any search engine optimization / marketing campaign.
If the website looks acceptable, it does NOT necessarily
mean the HTML code is correct, and especially when "WYSIWYG"
HTML Editors were used. WYSIWYG visual editors provide HTML changes
on the fly, along with visual presentation of these changes. As developing
or updating a website often demands prompt acting, visual editors are
commonly used tools. Unfortunately, this instant processing could cause
addition of useless, redundant, broken or incorrect tags, therefore at
least increasing the amount of coding used for a single HTML document/page,
or worse: invalid HTML code.
Note that a HTML validator utility that checks HTML syntax is provided
when submitting to Position
Technologies (former Inktomi Search Submit current Yahoo/Overture
Site Match Paid Inclusion Services). The same is necessary for any
search engine. It's not obligatory, but it could be very helpful, as HTML
errors could significantly interfere with your website indexing, as well
as confuse and trouble your users. No effects of search engine optimization
/ marketing could be seen without the proper website indexing.
The final goal of all website marketing strategies,
including all SEO/SEM techniques, is presenting the website to target
audience. If users are NOT satisfied, everything else is meaningless.
HTML syntax errors can make your site appear differently than you
intended, cause error messages and accessibility problems. Even if the
HTML code errors don't prevent the website spidering, it would still be
useless if your users get frustrated. They may leave before they check
out your content, products and services!
Validating the HTML code to the W3C standards through a reliable HTML
validation application should be done BEFORE the website goes online.
Each page of your website should be validated, all errors should be fixed
and the pages should be revalidated until they are error free. Although
there are several excellent HTML code validators online, the most reliable
would be to use the W3C
validation services online.
The most reliable way to ensure that user browsers as well as search
engine spiders can understand the HTML coding that you are using is to
trace the cause and the source of the errors found through validation
process. Through practice this process becomes quicker and simpler, until
nearly all common errors are avoided in advance.
Just as it is important to ensure that your HTML is valid, it's also
important to ensure that your style sheet is correct. Since style
sheets are now the preferred way to specify a HTML document's presentation,
and external style sheets are considered the most effective to further
simplify the HTML code and avoid the changes in the HTML document source,
W3C
CSS validation service is also recommenced.
Every HTML document must have a specific HTML structure, comprising of
HEAD and BODY element. Style sheets are utilized to override the HTML's
stylistic limitations. HTML
Document Structure & Style Sheets >>
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