Coding and Search Engine Optimization
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I've previously written about some simple things you can do to your web site and its pages to optimize it for the search engines. It's time to dig deeper. In this article I will discuss code and its role in search engine optimization.
We've already covered in detail <title tag>, <h> tags, <alt> tags, <images> tags, <meta keywords> and <meta description>. You can learn more about those elements by reading my article on website development and SEO.
Page Styles
There are two methods you can use to format your pages: HTML or HTML/CSS. As far as SEO goes, I believe both ways are okay.
HTML is the standard used by most websites. As long as there is quality content on your site and many inbound links, it will rank in search results.
HTML only
When you use HTML-only code to lay out pages, you greatly limit yourself. With an HTML-only layout, you have to format each and every page of your website (or use one template for all).
When you feel there's a need for redesign or make adjustments, you have to go through each page, one by one. What if you have 1000 pages? What if you decide to make more modifications? It's tedious.
HTML/CSS
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. CSS separates content from design. Content, which is text, images and video, is laid out using HTML, while CSS does the design job. The main advantage of CSS is that you need to modify only one file in order to make changes on all pages. This way, you can make as many adjustments as you want.
CSS is also friendly to users, since they only need to download one or several files to see the design of an entire website. With HTML-only design, visitors have to download design elements each time they get to a new page. CSS is faster.
Learn more about CSS and HTML.
Next: Validation >>
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