Valid HTML Code crucial to SEO
Newcomers to web page design often overlook a crucial aspect of SEO and web site promotion: the validity of the HTML code.
What is Valid HTML code?
Well for starters, most web pages are written in HTML.
As for every language, HTML has its own grammar and syntax, and each document written in HTML is supposed to follow these rules.
HTML constantly changes and as it now has become a relatively complex issue, it is very easy to make mistakes … and we do know by now the favorable weight the new MSN search engine places on proper coding practise … Refer proper coding practice required to rank highly at MSN SEO for MSN.com
If your HTML code is not following the official rules it is called invalid HTML code.
Why Valid HTML code is crucial to SEO and good SE rankings
Search engines have to parse the HTML code of your web site to find the relevant content .. and if your HTML code contains errors, search engines might not be able to find the content on the page .. there ends your optimization efforts and quest for high rankings.
Dynamically generated Links, or those URL’s for example that end in a question mark and numbers, are often overlooked by the search engine robots. This necessitates the application of “re-write” rules on the applicable .htaccess file to convert such links to appear as Static HTML links and qualify to be indexed in the SE’s
Search engine crawler programs obey HTML standards. They only can index your web site if it is compliant to the official HTML standard. If there’s a mistake in your web page code, the SE spider might stop crawling your web site and lose what they’ve collected so far because of the error.
Most major search engines can deal with minor errors in HTML code, however, a single missing bracket or ‘tick’ in your HTML code can be the reason your web page cannot be found in search engines.
If you don’t close required HTML tags properly, or if important tags are missing, search engines might ignore the entire contentof that web page.
Browser display problems: Even the simplest display errors can cause big problems - particularly in browsers like Netscape and Opera .. as these two browsers adhere more stringently to W3C standards. It is best to test each page you design to ensure it displays correctly in the major browsers — Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape and Opera.
Although Internet Explorer may ignore a problem like a missing closing TABLE tag, such an exclusion will cause Netscape to ignore the entire table and all its contents
How to check the Validity of your HTML code?
Fortunately, there are free services that allow you to check the validity of your HTML code.
The search engine optimization community’s HTML validator is the W3 HTML Validator .
It is the service that all professionals use to check HTML documents for conformance to W3C HTML and XHTML recommendations and other HTML standards.
Just enter the address of a web page at either the W3C HTML validator or the Web Design Group HTML Validator and you will discover what errors are on that page.
The Web Design Group validator above is the recommended option if you are not completely comfortable with HTML and the required standards .. the recommended corrections are far easier to decipher and implement.
Although not all HTML errors will cause problems for your search engine rankings, some of them can keep web spiders from indexing your web pages and spoil your search engine optimization efforts.
Valid HTML code makes it easier for search engine spiders to index your site so you should make sure that at least the biggest mistakes in your HTML code are corrected.
NOTE: Pick your theme density and keyphrases correctly, pay close attention to the search engine optimization tips and tutorials (see recent posts under) covered in this Blog .. then run your web pages through the HTML validator, and after making the recommended alterations, the major search engines will reward you with high rankings. The msn.com search engine in particular, places a high value on proper coding practise.
Refer recent SEO posts: search engine optimization for the MSN beta search and simple search engine optimization tips for online blogs to assist in accurate optimizing of your online blog Posts .. the results will be hugely rewarding.
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