When I first started my work experience I had absolutely no idea what some of the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) terms meant. In order to not look like a complete idiot on my first day, I decided to look up several widely used terms beforehand. I have to say though, some make you wonder how on earth certain terms came to be.Read more…
I wrote an article a year ago on what you should be asking your web developer. It became quite a popular post so I have decided to follow it up with another guide on what you should be looking for in a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) company.
With so many companies out there how do you know you are getting someone you can trust, how can you be sure of their history and that they are not a ‘bunch of cowboys’ – to quote one of our clients on their previous web design company!
So how do you choose a good, honest and ethical SEO company and what should you be looking out for?Read more…
In the deep, dark world of Search Engine Optimisation there are many companies who are willing to promise you the earth with guaranteed positions and quick results. Firstly, how do you know they can deliver the results you are promised, secondly, how can you be sure they are employing ethical SEO practices and thirdly, how can you trust a company who guarantees results in the first place?!Read more…
A lot of clients ask why they need their ‘already working perfectly well’ website validated. Below is a brief guide to try and answer this in a clear and simple way.
Firstly we should explain what is meant by a validated website.
Put simply, validation is the act of writing a website in as ‘clean’ a way as possible and testing it against industry standards. It makes use of cascading style sheets (CSS) to format the page layout and text and also cleans up any ‘loose coding’ which could otherwise cause problems.
For a further description we refer to an excerpt from the wc3 website as they are the last word when it comes to validation!
Validation is a process of checking your documents against a formal Standard, such as those published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for HTML and XML-derived Web document types. It serves a similar purpose to spell checking and proofreading for grammar and syntax, but is much more precise and reliable than any of those processes because it is dealing with precisely-specified machine languages, not with nebulously-defined human natural language.
The Benefits of Validating your website.
1) Compatibility
When your website code is not validated you are running the risk of your site displaying unpredictably in different browsers. For example, Internet Explorer is more forgiving and likely to internally fix small amounts of ‘loose coding’ whereas stricter browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Safari will display a page as it is coded. Validation makes the code uniform and means you will not have an unprofessional and unpredictable looking website or risk alienating certain users who don’t use Internet Explorer!
2) Search Engine Optimisation
A website that is ‘clean’ is far easier for the search engines (Google, Yahoo etc) to ‘read through’ and index. The easier they can do this the easier it is for them to find the real meat of your site i.e the content.
3) Accessibility
Validating a site requires the use of many accessibility techniques such as the use of ALT tag on images. Steps such as these make your site more readable for those users who are vision, motor skilled or cognitively impaired. Validation makes the site readable as it allows aids such as screen readers to read through your site correctly. Although validation is not in any way a guarantee that your site is accessible, it is a huge leap towards this and far superior to an unvalidated site.
4) Faster loading
Conventional websites made use of tables and an extensive amount of tags for formatting both the page structure and content. The use of CSS separates the structure from the content and gives the browsers less code to trawl through before they can successfully render the page. Validation also aids the browser in displaying the site faster as there is no ‘loose coding’ for the browser to get tangled up in or waste time trying to ‘fix’.
So where does this leave you?
Firstly you might like to check your current site for validation (see the steps below).
Secondly, decide whether validation is something that you feel you should be concerned with but please bear in mind that you now have a legal obligation to have an accessible website *
Thirdly, enlist the help of a professional SEO company to review your website and carry out necessary alterations. In some cases you may be cheaper having your website completely rebuilt rather than trying to fix the current errors but don’t let this put you off. Look upon it as an opportunity to spruce up your existing site and start afresh!
How to validate your website using Validation Tools:
1. Go to the W3C validator website
2. Type in the URL of your website
3. Hit the check button
4. You will be presented with a list of results. If your site validates then you can relax for now if it doesn’t then maybe you want to enlist in the help of a professional search engine optimisation company such as ourselves!
Ref:
* HTML and CSS Validation: Should You Validate Your Web Page? by Christopher Heng,
* http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-accessibility/uk-website-legal-requirements.shtml
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