The Perfect Combination of HTML and CSS | Increase Website Traffic

Web Hosting SEO and the New Paradigm

Part Six: The Perfect Combination of HTML and CSS

The KISS Adage

”Keep it Sweet and Simple”… That is the magic mantra when it comes to your web site design. You will probably be given the choice of using one of many scripting and markup languages by your web design team. However, your audience for your web site is two-pronged—your site visitors and the search engine spiders.

In order for the search engines to properly index your web site and perform what is called a “deep crawl,” the edifice needs to be barrier-free. These considerations will help you to generate organic and targeted traffic to your web site and significantly increase your web site traffic.

Valid HTML Code and Search Engine Optimization

HTML is known widely for its simplicity and SEO-friendly attributes. In order for the search engine search bots to effectively catalog the contents of your web site—a process also referred to as parsing—the HTML code needs to be clean, error-free and structured logically. Simply choosing HTML as your preferred scripting language is not enough. It needs to be qualitatively superior in order to support not only quick but also periodic search engine crawls. Standards compliant valid HTML code is crucial to timely indexing by the search engines. The most effective way to address HTML-related issues is by running your code through the W3C HTML Validator, a free HTML resource available from a variety of sources including the W3C web site

HTML Tags and SEO Performance

You should pay special attention to the presence of well-crafted HTML tags not only on your home page but on each one of your pages. Lately, this aspect of search engine optimization has been receiving some press and leading us to believe that HTML tags are no longer as important as they used to be. We recommend that you embed all the necessary HTML tags, also known as meta data, into your web pages. Search engine algorithms tend to shift periodically and the presence of HTML meta data on your web pages will never prove detrimental. Like men’s fashions the pendulum swings eternally and what is not in fashion today on your web site may well be in vogue tomorrow.

Cascading Style Sheets and SEO

Cascading Style Sheets or CSS is a control file that both sets and controls several on-page elements such as overall visual appearance, font size, font color and tables on a web page. The single most distinct advantage of using CSS is that it reduces file size and thus favorably impacts the page loading factor on your site. CSS is known to improve readability and helps to enhance page appeal both to site visitors as well as search engine search bots. The best way to generate maximum mileage from your CSS is to store your CSS instruction set as an external file on your web hosting server and link all the applicable web pages to your CSS file. This will enable to organize your content logically, maintain consistency and implement wild card modifications to your web pages without having to intervene into each page individually. Moreover, using CSS correctly moves your content to the top of your web page. As a result, the search bot indexes more of your content and not your code.

Welcome Mat for Search Engine Spiders

Search engines deploy "top down" logic when they index your web pages to be featured in search engine results. For them, clean code which is used to support page content, is their focus unlike your site visitors for whom visual appeal is paramount. Strive to provide the search engines with a favorable indexing environment and watch your page position soar dramatically.

About the Author

Naveen Kapur is a senior SEO and SEM consultant with more than ten years of core experience in multimedia and graphic design, website optimization and Internet marketing. He helps organizations achieve their corporate objectives by building an online presence on the Internet.