Quality Code and SEO

[nashville]

I am interested to know what quality or "valid" code plays in the SEO game. When I use a spider simulator my site does fine and I rank #6 in Google for one keyword.

But could rankings be higher somehow if the code was "better"

Thanks everyone.

PS - If this Google update gets any worse nothing will help.

[aaron2005]

My site that is doing great is a mess and doesn't validate in anything. I see sites above me in the SERPS that are all messed up. It appears to not matter that much. BUT if you have some code that is being seen as spam you are screwed dude. Wish I knew more...sorry.

[nashville]

I do not *think* I have any spam code. But it seems like I should rank higher than I do based on competitors. I seem to only make positions 5-20 with 9-14 being average.

[onelife]

We use Frontpage to create the sites, so the code is pretty bloated, but we always seem to rank well even with the bad code.

When I look at my competitors theirs ain't any better to be honest.

So hand on heart I can't say that perfect code would make much difference SEO wise.

[wrmineo]

This has been a hotly discussed and contested issue in many threads here at WebProWorld and various other forums. Sorry to admit, I'm too disorganized and lack a sufficient amount of ingested coffee at the moment to find them for you.

However, here are my simple views on this issue.

Is validated code needed for SEO? No, and being politically minded ... also a Yes.

No. Not in the sense that non-valid code can't rank very well for keywords and get massive amounts of traffic. Some geeks started a datacenter in their dorm room a little over seven years ago. To this day, their homepage is still not W3C valid code, yet Google is the #1 media entiity in the world in terms of capital.

Yes. Validating your code has lots of benefits IMO, but in terms of SEO, it simply helps ensure that you don't have any inhibitors or "stoppers" that may prevent a bot from fully crawling, and hence appreciating, your content. Also, validated code generally accesses faster, and that too is a plus not just for bots, but visitors too.

[aaron2005]

coffee???

i

love

coffee

:)

[cryptblade]

I think streamlined code CAN work better, depending on your competitors, industry - and a whole bunch of other factors.

I believe streamlined code is BETTER than bloated code because it is more organized. I prefer to work with style sheets a majority of the time because it is easier to control layout, placements, and specialized display.

It does NOT make or break any of my sites though as far as SEO is concerned. As folks have already stated, there are butch sites other that do well.

But - as general practice, it is best if you can streamline and organize code. Programmers will vouch for that, I'm sure.

[DrTandem1]

Okay, here we go. Some have argued that MSN likes code that validates more than code that does not. Ironically, that would mean sites created with FrontPage would not rank as well as they could.

Now, let's look at a real-world example. Search for "diamond ring" (minus the quotes). On Google and Yahoo, the #1 result in the organic SERPs is:

http://www.adiamondisforever.com

It's #17 on MSN.

Look at its source code. Not only will it not validate, but from an SEO perspective it is also terrible.

Personally, I think a site's code should validate. Not to do so leaves the site open for trouble down the road. Code that does not validate may not appear properly in some browsers. Invalid code means the visitors have a better chance of not seeing the site as it was intended, if at all.

My advice is to take the proper time and patience and effort it requires to build a site to standards set by the W3C. Not for the search engines, but for your visitors.

[onelife]

Further to my previous post. While I'll admit our sites contain Frontpage produced code and are a little bloated, they generally rank really well.

But I also see changes ahead and we're already moving toward more streamlined code that validates correctly. So much so that I currently buffing up on coding right now. So in the future our sites will consist of external style sheets for display, positioning etc and the page will be for content only.

It has got to be the way forward and I don't think it'll be long before SEO moves in that direction.

[TrafficProducer]

"valid" code

Sorry if this distracts from the original quire..

I mainly use Microsoft Front Page, and some HTML by hand for my static websites pages.

ARGH!!!! Front Page keeps breaking lines of text up...

for example, note the Newlines placed in by Front Page:-




HomeKey (hkeybt96.zip) A simple
beginners touch typing program. Make your own lessons. Improve your
keyboard skills. Learn at your own speed.<font color="#FF0000">Freeware</font>,
copy and pass on for free. Touch typing trainer program
for DOS or Windows.

I think this be harder to read for search engines.

Doing or tiding up by hand would take too long.

Is DreamWeaver better???

[janeth]

You can make a site look good in all browsers without the code validating.

I do not think any of the major search engines care if you code validates or not.

No disrespect to DrTandem as I really like reading his post but I do not think showing one search results that does not rank well on one of the major search engines proves anything.

Those are all over the place. (-;

There are somethings that want validate, try putting a little flash in your header and see what happenes. (-;

[cryptblade]

I personally like Dreamweaver better than Frontpage and I think most or many designers do too.

I think it will be interesting to see just how much future SEO will include streamlined site coding.

Again, it's nice to streamline code as a general practice. It makes troubleshooting and all that much easier.

[DrTandem1]

You can make a site look good in all browsers without the code validating.

I do not think any of the major search engines care if you code validates or not.

No disrespect to DrTandem as I really like reading his post but I do not think showing one search results that does not rank well on one of the major search engines proves anything.

Those are all over the place. (-;

There are somethings that want validate, try putting a little flash in your header and see what happenes. (-;

No disrespect taken. However, I did not state that invalid code will cause a slip in the SERPs. I simply pointed to the big 3 and how they looked at one site. My main point was just that SEO had absolutely no part in that site's position in the SERPs and that the only SE to devalue its massive amount of IBLs was MSN.

I think that MSN does use validation as factor. Of course not the only factor and I'm sure there are plenty of examples of that have sites high in MSN's SERPs without valid code.

As to you remarking about Flash in the header, please check these sites and see whether or not they validate:

http://www.westpacindustries.com/

http://www.donnharms.com/issues.htm

http://www.reprolaw.com/

I could list many more, but I think you will see that they all have Flash and all validate.

[onelife]

I have been thinking about cleaning up the code we produce from Frontpage a great deal of late. Especially when we ran a keyword density tool on our home page and the most prominent keyword at the time was "color", which is obviously not used in the content but in the code (mainly in adsense).

Not sure if the SE's care about html words as much as the content words, but there must be something in having cleaner code.

Sure there are plenty of sites ranking well with poor code and structure, and many many site don't validate. But will it always be so? That doubt in itself was enough to make me think about planning for the future and start learning to code.

As for which is better Frontpage or Dreamweaver, well I've always used Frontpage because it's easy and I was lazy. But yesterday the thing refused to display any code or pages from a site with 15,000 pages in it. Yet when you previewed in a browser or imported into Dreamweaver all was fine - Strange but True.

Today I started coding (for the first time!!) by hand in dreameaver. Wow is this stuff easy, 1 hour in a book and I've rewritten our home page and the code is a clean as a whistle (I've not uploaded it yet). So a wizzywig boy has been converted overnight!!

[DrTandem1]

Today I started coding (for the first time!!) by hand in dreameaver. Wow is this stuff easy, 1 hour in a book and I've rewritten our home page and the code is a clean as a whistle (I've not uploaded it yet). So a wizzywig boy has been converted overnight!!

For those who have Dreamweaver, but found the included manuals less than helpful, I found a great book for first learning it. Now, I learned it a while back, so my version was Dreamweaver 4, but I believe it is also available in an updated MX version. It's called:

Dreamweaver Hands on Training

It looks like a big fat book, almost as daunting as the Macromedia manual. However, it is a very fast and easy to use book. After using it, you will then be able to use the original manual better. Probably costs about $30 and is available at amazon.com.

[aaron2005]

There are somethings that want validate, try putting a little flash in your header and see what happenes. (-;

Damn, I want a little flash in my header today! ;-)

[jacobwissler]

You can embed Flash on an HTML page and validate it. MSN once said that all sites "must" validate by January 1, 2005, which was crazy - if the New York Yankees posted their roster online and it did not validate, it would not be ignored.

I vadidated my 3 personal sites and did not see an improvement. This is probably one of 100 factors they look at, and it probably helps 1%. I want that 1%.

[bmiller011]

This is actually from a post that I made yesterday under the Website Usability board at http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=55042.

The conclusion I am beginning to come to is for the time and effort one puts into making sure they have valid html, and hand coding a site to insure the code is as clean as possible, there is really no reason not to use a WYSIWYG program and save all the time involved. The benifits just don't seem to outway the means. Hopefully someone can prove me wrong because if there was a true "reward" (other than the fact that you are proving you can do it) for having clean and valid code I would make sure all my sites had just that. But if not then why bother?

I am sure that if I were to give my clients two options, one option being a website written with a WYSIWYG program for x amount of dollars, or a site hand coded with valid html (which does take longer) for x amount (that would obviously be more than the latter)I am sure they would choose the WYSIWYG site. I don't know maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'll have to try it and see what happens. Or maybe someone already is giving this option and could enlighten me.

[DrTandem1]

This is actually from a post that I made yesterday under the Website Usability board at http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=55042.

The conclusion I am beginning to come to is for the time and effort one puts into making sure they have valid html, and hand coding a site to insure the code is as clean as possible, there is really no reason not to use a WYSIWYG program and save all the time involved. The benifits just don't seem to outway the means. Hopefully someone can prove me wrong because if there was a true "reward" (other than the fact that you are proving you can do it) for having clean and valid code I would make sure all my sites had just that. But if not then why bother?

I am sure that if I were to give my clients two options, one option being a website written with a WYSIWYG program for x amount of dollars, or a site hand coded with valid html (which does take longer) for x amount (that would obviously be more than the latter)I am sure they would choose the WYSIWYG site. I don't know maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'll have to try it and see what happens. Or maybe someone already is giving this option and could enlighten me.

It's not so much that you are wrong as your conclusion is based upon false premises. That first being everyone charges by the hour. They do not. The second false premise is that using a WYSIWYG program you can't have code that validates. You have to know what you are doing. The automation of the mundane tasks of HTML is not a substitute for not knowing code.

For instance, a minor point may be that you forgot to add an alt attribute to an image tag. You may not see this unless you attempt to validate the code.

Will a missing alt attribute cause major problems? Probably not, but it may not be a minor graphic for which you neglected to supply alternative text, but maybe the logo. Especially, if it is used as a link, you would have missed a golden opportunity not only to make your site available to the visually impaired, but also to search engines trying to index the image.

Lastly, not following industry standards is unprofessional. If there were not standards, the internet would be a very difficult place to surf.

[jacobwissler]

I agree with B Miller. We validate our sites, but not client sites unless they ask for it. If you hold yourself out as a professional web designer, your site needs to validate, but for the average merchant, the value is questionable.

[onelife]

The route I'm using is to use dreamweaver in split mode and create a master page template with all the css gubbins dropped into an external file. Then all pages simply use the editable regions within the template.

So while it may take a little longer, I can see what is happening before my eyes and as its a template, well there's only really one of those; unless I need to add more.

As Jacob said that 1% has got to be of interest for anyone who cares about the longevity of their sites. If clean, valid code is not that important now, whos to say that it wont be in the future with all the innovations of wireless internet, mobile phone internet etc I can see it becoming more important.

For many years I denied the need to have clean code, but you could say the code I have produced with Frontpage is like reading a book written in SMS text. Sure we can understand it but does it smack of quality or authority or read well?

SE's are just programs, all it takes is for one too many hiccups on your site and maybe they'll rank someone else higher.

[DrTandem1]

Okay, let me put it this way. If your code is invalid, but looks okay (to you), when will it be so poor that it will effect SEO?

For instance, I think most of us agree that the title tag of the page is of great importance to most search engines. Omitting it will cause a validation error as the <head> section isn't finished. However, the page will look "okay." I think that would be of great consequence to an e-commerce site.

My point is, if you meet standards, you will have fewer worries by taking the time to validate a site for yourself or your client. As a matter of fact, I'm far more concerned, if a site doesn't validate for a client's page that I designed, than I am for my own site.

[bmiller011]

DrTandem1 wrote:

It's not so much that you are wrong as your conclusion is based upon false premises. That first being everyone charges by the hour. They do not. The second false premise is that using a WYSIWYG program you can't have code that validates. You have to know what you are doing. The automation of the mundane tasks of HTML is not a substitute for not knowing code.

I realize that not everyone charges by the hour. But if they don't charge by the hour they do charge by the job unless it is pro-bono. Either way you cannot tell me that if a designer gave two options, one being valid-clean html, the other being a site designed with a WYSIWYG editor and uses the un-manipulated code that the WYSIWYG program spits out (which alot if not most designers do), that the designer would not charge more for the clean code. How many clients will opt for the more expensive when either site could be viewed in a web browser and indexed in the search engines nearly the same?

Many web designers do use a WYSIWYG program as a substitute for not knowing code, and many of them do not manipulate the code after it is generated. I did not mean to imply that you could not get valid html from a WYSIWYG. But you don't get clean code unless it is manipulated after it is generated.

I understand that not following standards is not professional. But I also realize that most web designers don't follow standard otherwise there would be alot more valid sites. So does that mean that anyone that created a website with invalid code is not a professional? I think I am beginning to ramble so I will just stop now.

[bmiller011]

I guess what I am trying to say is I want there to me more emphasis on valid and clean code because it would only help the internet. I don't think the general internet public even knows the difference between valid and invalid code and most of our clients don't either unless they are educated about it. I think if more people understood what valid code meant the "professional designer" would have more business because then it becomes a skill instead of just throwing something together which any one can do.

[incrediblehelp]

Bloated code is bad for SEO, valid code doesnt matter as much.

[DrTandem1]

Bloated code is bad for SEO, valid code doesnt matter as much.

All other things being equal, what is worse for SEO, a few lines of JavaScript or a missing page title tag?

[incrediblehelp]

Yeah I was a little to vague there. What I mean is it is much worse to have all your CSS and JavaScript sitting at the top of each page than it is to missing a couple of ALT tags here and there. All in all, if you are doing what you can as far as adhering to all the SEO principles to rank well then I think neither is going to kill you. When cooking up a website, getting as many ingredients into the SEO recipe will make for a much tastier pie...I mean website, than not..

[DrTandem1]

Yeah I was a little to vague there. What I mean is it is much worse to have all your CSS and JavaScript sitting at the top of each page than it is to missing a couple of ALT tags here and there. All in all, if you are doing what you can as far as adhering to all the SEO principles to rank well then I think neither is going to kill you. When cooking up a website, getting as many ingredients into the SEO recipe will make for a much tastier pie...I mean website, than not..
Agreed.

[TrafficProducer]

Dreamweaver 4 Hands on Training

"DrTandem1"

Just checking is that the one by Lynda Weinman ?

Thanks :)

[DrTandem1]

Dreamweaver 4 Hands on Training

"DrTandem1"

Just checking is that the one by Lynda Weinman ?

Thanks :)

Yes, but I don't know, if she had anything to do with later versions.

[Control Freak]

I'm currently running tests on almost 100 sites trying to figure what the most effective parts of SEO are. This weeks PR updates on several of my sites are coming up with some interesting results. I use good clean and occasionally valid code for the majority of my sites, but really Validation isn't something I consider important. Sure it helps, but just not that much. To support that; a good dozen of my sites have been re-indexed or initially indexed by Google this week. Of those Dozen 10 were validated, and 2 were not. yet all recieved a PR of 3 this week. Interesting little fact though: One site with a new PR3 on every page; 2 of the pages didn't even have meta description or keyword, and had the title of Domain :: home. Yet still got PR3. There's many more details to consider, but that supports the theory that valid code is about as important as a decent description, but no where near as important as well worded text.

[DrTandem1]

I'm currently running tests on almost 100 sites trying to figure what the most effective parts of SEO are. This weeks PR updates on several of my sites are coming up with some interesting results. I use good clean and occasionally valid code for the majority of my sites, but really Validation isn't something I consider important. Sure it helps, but just not that much. To support that; a good dozen of my sites have been re-indexed or initially indexed by Google this week. Of those Dozen 10 were validated, and 2 were not. yet all recieved a PR of 3 this week. Interesting little fact though: One site with a new PR3 on every page; 2 of the pages didn't even have meta description or keyword, and had the title of Domain :: home. Yet still got PR3. There's many more details to consider, but that supports the theory that valid code is about as important as a decent description, but no where near as important as well worded text.

PR has very little to do with content and SEO and more with how many sites link to yours. Google reasons that they don't need to check content as long as other "relevant" sites find yours important enough to link to it. From their recent results, they may want to re-think that logic.

Since content now has little emphasis with Google, it is doubtful that much of anything matters other than links to Google. I have used an example earlier in this topic of a site that's coding is invalid and its SEO is non-existent, yet it is number one in Google (among others) for a very generic and popular term.

I have also explained how validation will point out important errors in coding that may otherwise have gone unnoticed. Average site owners are typically unaware of W3C standards. However, when they come to me wondering why their site isn't performing, I am happy to point out issues and failing validation is one of them. Nothing like an uninterested third-party such as the W3C to prove it to them.

Most issues usually revolve around slow load speed and navigation, not validation. If I'm going to build a site, it will validate.

[freehits]

My advice is to take the proper time and patience and effort it requires to build a site to standards set by the W3C. Not for the search engines, but for your visitors.

First Off this sounds like excellent advice from someone who appraoches sites with the perspective of a professional, just good practice, and in an effort to agree with DrT where we bickered before.....
This is well said

I honestly say it is patience that keeps me from doing this as I should 99% of the time.

Here is that thread where this was bickered like a bunch of little old ladies. This thread is in reference to MSN results.

WARNING: this thread goes round and round in circles and gets nowhere concrete

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=41952&highlight=validate

[freehits]

Yet still got PR3. There's many more details to consider, but that supports the theory that valid code is about as important as a decent description, but no where near as important as well worded text.

I have 2-3 blogs that were deleted by the host over 1 month ago and went up in PR this past week.
They are now PR5, yet dont exist.

[Control Freak]

PR has very little to do with content and SEO
I do agree, sorry if I made it sound otherwise. PR is just a benchmark, and has little to do with actual rankings. In this case it's biggest use was to jump off the screen and tell me which sites on my server Google had taken notice of.


Since content now has little emphasis with Google

I can't jump on that idea just yet. If a site drops in rankings on me, a little keyword rich article seems to help bump it right back up in just a couple days. However, cleaning up code on some site, removing huge blocks of <!--Remarks, letting the css do it's job and removing extra font/size tags does nothing to help boost.

[incrediblehelp]

PR has very little to do with content and SEO
I do agree, sorry if I made it sound otherwise. PR is just a benchmark, and has little to do with actual rankings. In this case it's biggest use was to jump off the screen and tell me which sites on my server Google had taken notice of.


Since content now has little emphasis with Google

I can't jump on that idea just yet. If a site drops in rankings on me, a little keyword rich article seems to help bump it right back up in just a couple days. However, cleaning up code on some site, removing huge blocks of <!--Remarks, letting the css do it's job and removing extra font/size tags does nothing to help boost.

Off-site content around IBL's has much to do with Google algo of late.

[Webnauts]

You might would like to have a look at this excellent to my opinion presentation: http://webstandardsgroup.org/resources/google-and-accessibility/index.cfm

[DrTandem1]

You might would like to have a look at this excellent to my opinion presentation: http://webstandardsgroup.org/resources/google-and-accessibility/index.cfm

I'm thinking that your post may need a bit of assistance in its translation to English. Could this be what you mean:

"You may want to look at this example of my expressed opinion..."

Anyway, I read through it and they are fairly basic concepts with which I mostly agree. However, I do not think enough information was given regarding Google's emphasis (obsession?) with IBLs.

[incrediblehelp]

Anyway, I read through it and they are fairly basic concepts with which I mostly agree. However, I do not think enough information was given regarding Google's emphasis (obsession?) with IBLs.

Or the text around those IBL's

[Webnauts]

[quote=Webnauts]
I'm thinking that your post may need a bit of assistance in its translation to English. Could this be what you mean:

"You may want to look at this example of my expressed opinion..."


Sorry for my horrible English, and thanks for correcting me.

[dougadam]

Clean up your Web pages with HTML TIDY

http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/

[onelife]

Just to dig this one up again.

Up until a week ago I had never written any code and used frontpage for all my sites, I was very ignorant to the whole idea of coding by hand or even looking at code produced by frontpage. Well it took my a couple of hours to learn html and css and it was definitely worth the effort. Not only have I re-written a couple of pages that I will use as a comparision but this new knowledge has allowed me to check out the competition.

I do great in google, garbage in msn and yahoo, so I had a look at competition beating me. They all have one thing in common - better code, cleaner simpler etc. I have loads more links, pages than any of them, but when you look at the code, you see that the keywords in a H1 tag didn't appear in my code until line 113 compared 10 in my competition.

Most of it was poor layout I'll admit that, but the code was stuffed with tables, positioning, span tags and classes that were totally unnecessary. So hopefully the time invested will prove a success in serps results.

I have re-written 5 pages that were unaffected by any updates and taken their averages over the last year. Give it a couple of months and we'll see if there is any improvement; especially in MSN and Yahoo.

Cheers!

[motionex]

Yes. Also, validated code generally accesses faster, and that too is a plus not just for bots, but visitors too.

Which bring em to the question do we do SEO just for bots or shall we keep visitors in mind...? I am not a specialist from what i have read, algorithms are starting to ctach up and tend to give penalties to site only SEOed (sorry for that verb lol) for Bots without the User in mind...