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SEO 101 Learning HTML
By Dwayne Goerges of www.topwebsitetips.com
What? Learn HTML? Fat Chance! That’s why I use this fancy wysiwyg (or CMS) editor! Yes, your “what you see is what you get” (wysiwyg) editor or CMS (content management system) does create HTML and usually does look pretty, however along with that prettiness often comes a lot of additional junk in the code and sometimes some very poorly written code. So…. If it looks good in the browser why should I care what the code looks like? Well, it boils down to this. Your webpage doesn’t get indexed by some guy looking at a browser and reading your page. Search engine spiders (the programs that go to your site and check it out) ONLY READ CODE. HTML Code
Let’s talk about how some of that bad code might affect your ranking in the search engines. 1) Bloated code: Yah, that’s kind of what it sounds like, a website with gas (a lot of extra hot air that stinks). One of the absolutely worse content editors (either wysiwyg or CMS) is/was Microsoft’s Front Page Editor. I would take a small clean HTML tag like the <p> paragraph </p> tag and stick multiple other tags (many of which couldn’t be read by the search engine spiders or the browsers and so are just ignored) in your code to specify a bunch of un-needed formatting that didn’t look any different when the page was rendered. Most of that formatting only made sense if the page was looked at in a MS word Document, not on the internet. Why does that make a difference if the browsers are going to ignore it? That extra code could triple the size of a webpage’s download. This means it takes longer for the page to download both for the visitor and the spiders. Spiders are set to only spend a set amount of time on your site indexing pages before it moves on to the next. If your page is 3 times larger than it would have been if written correctly, than that means the spider would have indexed three pages of your site instead of just the one. For large sites this can make a real difference in the number of pages Google has indexed for your site. Even for small sites, internet searchers are in general a rather impatient bunch. That few extra seconds could mean the difference between someone staying on your site (and buying something) or moving on before the page even completely finishes loading. Knowing even the basic tags can help you to know what you can safely delete while having your page still look exactly the same. Some of the worst offenders are the <p>, <ol>, <ul>, and <table> tags (the tags are needed; it’s the extra worthless formatting in the tag that is the problem). And often large numbers of <span> tags are added for formatting that have no meaning to browsers. Even buying a simple “HTML for Dummies” book will do wonders in shrinking some code. Well, of course you do have to read parts of the book and apply it too. 2) Adding links to your pages. There are a number of different attributes you can add to your links that will help your site in the search engines. Not all of these attributes are available with all content editors. Adding the ‘rel=”nofollow”’ helps protect your site if you need to link to something you are not sure if the search engines will consider questionable. Top of the list here is any affiliate links. While their product may be good, you don’t know how they SEO their site. If they use some shady methods, when their site gets penalized by Google, it may take your site with it if you are doing a link that is considered a trust vote (a link without the NoFollow).
It doesn’t hurt to add the title attribute to links either, especially on pages you don’t have as much content, Google does appear to add this text as part of your site text. Another attribute I like to add when linking to any page off my site is the ‘target=”_blank”’ attribute. This make the site linked to come up in a new page when you click the link and helps keep the person on your site longer. Besides if you are linking to supplemental information, this saves them from having to hit the back button to come back to your page and possible losing your page in the process. 3) Image Links: not all content editors allow you to add the “alt” attribute to an image. The search engines never get a chance to see your pretty image and have no clue what it is unless you tell them in words. That is done with the alt attribute (alt=”several words describing the image”). This also helps you to develop a site that is accessible to the visually impaired. They often can’t see the image so you need to tell them what is there. Do this in just a few words that describe this exact image. Each image should have a different alt attribute.
Well, I’ve already hit my word limit on this article (when I pass this limit the snoring of people falling asleep while reading my article gets deafening) and I’ve just scratched the surface of some of the bad code spewing forth from some of these content editors. So, it looks like you will have to wait for “Learning HTML” part two. Stay tuned, another action packed edition of SEO 101 is soon to follow!
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Contributor's Note
This is the fourteenth in a series of SEO 101 articles I am writing. I am a 10 year veteran of website building and promotion. These articles outline some of the basic steps I use to promote my clients websites.
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Top Website Tips
PLEASE VISIT THE CONTRIBUTOR'S WEBSITE
Wildnet Technologies
Review of Wildnet Technologies SEO work
www.topwebsitetips.com/seocompanyreviews....aspx
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In my early days as a web developer, I insisted on scheduling "Let's Learn HTML" sessions with all new clients, so they'd be able to maintain their sites without having to call me (in the middle of the night to change a single word somewhere deep in the site). I would show them how inserting simple little bits of easily remembered code - or should I say tags - reflected on the web page. This gave most clients great joy, some even clapped their hands and whooped in delight. A particular favorite was <ol>, also <blink>. Of course, half of them decided that if it was THAT easy then they didn't need a web developer and went on to develop their own hideous sites. 
 |  | nick Mar 19, 2011 13:56 |  appreciated |
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
OH YAH!!! Blink, now that's one of my favorites! I try to use it at least 2-3 times on every page I put on a site. It give the site a little extra pizazz :p
The copyright for this content entitled "SEO 101 Learning HTML" has been specified by the contributor as:
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This content may not be copied, distributed or adapted by anyone under any circumstances.
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This intel was contributed by adac
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