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- Why is Valid HTML Important for SEO?
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- 3 Reasons Why HTML and CSS Validation Are Important
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On Page SEO
Back in the day when web designers built their website by hand, it was very easy to make a mistake in the coding. However, now web designers are lucky to have the many tools that they have that no longer makes HTML and CSS validation such an issue that it used to be.
If you don’t know what HTML and CSS validation is, you have probably noticed it when it didn’t take place. If you have been to a website that looks odd, where items are falling off the side of the page, strange coding appears, or there are missing graphics, that is probably because no one took the time to validate their code.
When you build a website, you need to use HTML and CSS validation for the following reasons:
1. Not everyone uses Internet Explorer. Some people are still using old versions of Netscape and AOL, while others are using Firefox or Safari. You need to build your website so that it appears properly on all of these browsers.
2. Not everyone is on a PC! Some people are viewing your website from an Apple, others from their phone or even their television. Your website needs to appear properly there, too.
3. You may find that you need your website to be ADA-compliant. This means that readers for the visually-impaired will be reading the text. So, if you are going to utilize a lot of graphics, there needs to be “alt” tags in place so that the reader can “read” them, too.
By using a quality HTML or CSS validation program, many of which are found online for free, you can make sure that your website is fully accessible to everyone, no matter what kind of computer they are using, or even whether they can actually see the screen or not.
The success of any website is going to be determined by the amount of traffic that it can generate. If you want your blog to generate more traffic, you are going to have to utilize SEO Techniques. But what is SEO, and how can I use it to bring my blog traffic?
Search Engine Optimization. These three words should be on your mind every time you write a new pose. SEO blogging is all about giving search engines the opportunity to find you. But how do you make your site more visible to the search engines?
If you want to be found by the search engines, and you want your site to be ranked high on their list, you have to use keywords. Keywords are basically the search terms that people will use to find your site. When you use a site like Google, you type in a search term. Google, then finds all of the sites that might pertain to your search. SEO blogging means that you write keyword heavy articles that will allow your site to be found by the search engines.
But what are the right keywords? You can use an a program to analyze your website, and find out what keywords are working for you, and what keywords are not working for you. Another way to determine the appropriate keyword, is to think about the subject of the article. What is it really about? For instance, if you are writing about a person, make sure to use that person’s name. Do not use clever nicknames, or refer to them as him or her. Google doesn’t know him, or her. They know the person’s name.
So what’s the key to SEO blogging? You have probably heard of ‘writing for an audience,’ before, but now you have to ‘write for the search engines.’ Because, after all, that is how you are going to build your audience.
When was the last time you had a good look at your website? Not just look at the design and the color, but had a look at how the search engines see it. Is your website full of tables and unnecessary coding that confuses search engines? Is it dependent on Flash or JavaScript that prevents it from being seen by the search engines? A good SEO audit will tell you all of this and more, and help you to get your web site to the top of the rankings.
There are many companies that offer free SEO audit services as a means to selling you their SEO optimization services down the line. You should be aware that some of these are scams, and some of them may try and sell you services that you don’t really need. So, before you hire a company, just take a look at how your site currently ranks in comparison to your competitors.
A good SEO audit will review all of your code on all of your pages, ensuring that it is up-to-date and compliant with all the latest browsers. It will also help you devise alternatives to any Flash or Java technology that you may be using for navigation (these can prevent you from ranking high with the search engines).
Perhaps the most important part of an audit will be to determine what your keywords should be. A good SEO company will be able to give you precise details on what keywords will work for you, and what ones won’t. By learning your correct keywords and how to place them throughout your web site, you will have a better chance of ranking high without having to pay for placement. Getting all your clicks and impressions without paying for them is the best way to make your business a success. Get a FREE SEO Audit today!
Robots.txt is an instruction file to specifically give search engine robots the rules that they must follow. Robots instructions can also be written as meta tags into individual pages. A common misconception is that not having a robots.txt will prevent your website from being crawled or discovered by search engine crawlers. This is not true. A crawler such as GoogleBot, will still crawl your site and spider all of your content.
What can get tricky is if you accidentally provide incorrect instructions in your Robots.txt - this can cause the crawler to miss entire areas of your website. Having a correct Robots.txt file available will help limit the off-limits areas of your site for search crawlers.
Some webmasters also make extensive use of the Robots.txt to restrict spam crawlers from accessing the website.
An XML Sitemap is a fiie designed specifically to communicate with search engines on a programmatic level. The XML Sitemap is a directory for the search engine crawler to learn about all of the URLs on your website, where they are, how often they are updated, how important the various pages are, and much more.
The XML Sitemap is your opportunity to tell Google exactly what you intend for Google to discover about your site.
Based on the information that Google learns from your XML Sitemap, Google will decide which pages of your site are relevant and might be useful to people searching. Google will then index those pages, storing them in the Google index.
The Google Index is like the difference between having your contacts stored in your phone vs having to look them up in a phone book.
The more pages from your site that you can get into the Google index, the better.
Sitemap Configuration:
It is important to make sure that your XML Sitemap is properly configured. This means that your sitemap should dynamically update itself. For example, each time you add a new page of content to your site, that page should automatically be added also to the sitemap.xml and it should also contain the time and date stamp from the time that it was published. The specifications for the XML Sitemap protocol are available at sitemaps.org
Sitemap Submission:
Submitting the sitemap to Google is controlled through Google Webmaster Tools. Bing and Yahoo both have similar interfaces to submit a sitemap. Most SEO companies that are claiming to do "Search Engine Submissions" are really just doing this. It also doesn't need to be done more than once, unlike some would have you believe.
HTML Validation is important because of how search engines treat a website on a programmatic level. Search Engines discover your website and all of the site pages using a program called a search engine spider, bot, or crawler. These names are all essentially synonymous. The key takeaway is that because these programs are the method search engines use to discover your site, you have to provide your site to them in a logical, structured, and non-broken format.
Invalid HTML is a website that is broken from a programming standpoint. While the site may look just great to you and I when you surf onto it in your browser, you have to realize that browsers have built-in forgiveness with how they render your website. This means that the browser may compensate and try to make your site appear not broken. Sometimes the HTML that is invalid does not effect the layout or the appearance of the site, but rather the behavior or logic of the site.
Imagine calling a taxi and telling them directions to your house. You start to provide those directions, but midway through you start speaking in nonsense and gibberish. The taxi wouldn't have much luck in finding your house. The same is true for websites that are syntactically broken and have invalid HTML.
Get step-by-step instructions on how to optimize your website with a custom SEO Checklist.
Meta Descriptions Matter for SEO. Some SEO experts would have you believe that it is a waste to spend time crafting good meta descriptions. Nothing could be further from the truth. Meta Descriptions appear in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and provide you an awesome opportunity to control the message of your website.
When you write a perfect meta description, you have crafted a thing of beauty. You have provided the "WHY" to the search engine user. The answers to the Who, What, When, Why, and How are exactly what searchers are seeking. If your website contains the answer to their question, it is time to yell it from the mountain tops. When you have great website content that helps people, it is time to beat your chest and brag about it a little in your meta description.
Don't forget to include meta keywords within the text of your meta description, and make sure to write a marketing "call to action". The call to action is a hand-holding practice that takes the user from the Google results page right into your site, with a friendly command to the user about what they should do when they visit your site.
If you craft great meta descriptions, you will get more clicks, (click-throughs from people searching on the topic where you appear). More click-throughs means that your site is proving itself relevant to users out there, and Google should rightfully award your site with better search rankings.
Learn how to write perfectly customized meta descriptions for your website with a custom SEO Checklist
