W3C Validation not part of Google Search Engine Ranking Factor
There have been many arguments as to whether or not Google search engine ranking factors look for a clean code in a website. The W3C Schools have brought forth a very popular and widely used tool, called the W3C Validation and the CSS Validation. Basically, both these tools look at your HTML and CSS Style Sheet that code your website for any errors that may arise. This free tool will scan all of your code to make sure it is compliant with current web standards and free or any errors.
Recently Matt Cutts, Google software engineer, has said again that the W3C Validation does not affect search engine rankings. This is not the first time he has said this and will not be that last as many people are convinced that W3C is a factor in search engine rankings. Many people are convinced that having a clean coded website will increase search engine rankings. This is in fact untrue. A clean code does help the search engine spiders read and understand your website easier. A clean coded website will guide the spider to the important places on your site, without getting jumbled up in a web of unnecessary coding.
The main reason that W3C Validation is not used is because Google is concerned with browser compatibilities. Because a website shows up looking perfect in Internet Explorer does not mean it will look the same in Mozilla Firefox, on mobile phones, on web TV, etc. This is a big issue for many website developers as one site can look great on one computer, and look horrible on another computer. This is Google’s main issue with the W3C Validation. Just because a website passes the W3C Validation test does not mean that it will be compatible in all browsers. This is why Google does not factor this into their ranking. Another reason that Google does not validate websites is because of the time it would take to validate each individual page. Internet users want everything to happen instantaneously. They do not want to wait around for slow loading websites, when there are another million sites out there with the similar information. Therefore, Google eliminated the use of validating websites, to increase website load time and user appreciation for the speed and agility of their search engine. This makes sense, as larger websites would be slowed down by the validation process, causing unhappy web users.
Although it seems glum that there will be any universal web standards anytime soon, we can all keep our hopes up. Universal web standards will make web designers and developers lives so much easier. As of now different web browsers will show websites differently. On Mozilla-Firefox your website may look perfect, but on Internet Explorer the website may be off centered. This causes many headaches and tiresome trial and error to perfect websites.
There have been efforts made to create universal web standards, but these have yet to be widely adopted. Website designers and developers are at heeds with one another because of the issues caused by web compatibility. Until universal standards are adopted, there will be angry people working behind the scenes to create websites that look good in every browser. This becomes a time intensive, tedious project that can be eliminated once universal standard have been adopted.
The major roadblocks to having universal web standards are the browsers themselves. They are not compatible with one another causing websites to look good in one browser and horrible in another. Designers and programmers are frustrated by these inconsistencies between browsers, making their jobs nearly impossible. They do not know which website standards to use when building or coding a new website.
Matt Cutts even admits that he wishes Google did validate webpage’s, but the reality is that a lot of sites on the web, even popular sites do not pass the validation. This would mean that these pages would be dropped from their rankings, or need to redesign and recode their site. Both outcomes can have daunting effects on the website. If the code needs to be changes, then the site may need to change to adjust to the new coding.
Now you may be wondering why so many websites have a link at the bottom saying W3C Valid. They are under the impression that this adds value to the page when customers see it. The big reason to validate your website is too look for human errors that you may have overlooked when building your site. The W3C Validation will show you broken links and many other important coding factors that can negatively impact the way humans see your site.
In conclusion, it is a good idea to have the W3C validation on your site to check for errors and clean up unnecessary coding. Who knows, in the next few months or years this may become an important ranking factor for the search engines and you can be one step ahead.
About the Author
Brandon Leibowitz is a professional internet marketer. He has been involved in search engine optimization and marketing consulting with over five years of industry knowledge. Read news, tips, tricks, and anything else related to search engines in his SEO and SEM Blog.
From GoArticles.com Search Engine Tactics category
How Websites Can Help Your Business
By Ong Pang Seng
As you may know many businesses these days, whether big or small, are starting to realize the importance of having a website. Now if you’re on your tenterhooks still trying to decide on whether your particular business trade needs to be on the World Wide Web, then here are some ideas that may help you decide.
The most basic benefit of having your own company website is that your information is available to your clients all day and all night. Your potential clients may surf the web at hours that are most comfortable to them and, as long as your wares and services are online, they’ll be able to get the information they need right away.
And the distance doesn’t even matter! If your customer has a computer and an internet connection then he doesn’t have to pay for exorbitant long distance calls to get the information he needs from you.
Additionally, with a website you’re not just reaching your current local patrons, you’re also seen by people from all over the world. Imagine having a wider client base from different countries. Having a website utilizes the internet’s accessibility and relative affordability making international and domestic trade so much easier.
If your product allows it, you can now also transact over the internet. It may sound daunting to exchange goods or money over the internet but there are many safeguards for both the business and individual who plan to transact through the web.
This is also an avenue for improving customer relations. Aside from publishing your information, it’s now easier to answer questions from your clients through email or an FAQ section. You can also use your website to post polls or surveys about the consumer’s opinions on your products, enabling you to find ways to satisfy the needs and wants of the target market.
A company website allows your patrons to have a more visual appreciation of your products and services without requiring them to leave their desks. Because you can modify the general design of your website to suit your brand’s vision, you practically have control over what you want your client to see. Like if you own a construction business, you can make a page that has elements portraying the reliability of your building abilities. How you represent your goods through your site is all up to you.
Finally, another good thing about having a website to represent your service or product is that it’s easier to update collaterals and advertisements. You can revise your catalog online and even redesign the entire site whenever you feel the need to do so. Have you decided to add a new item to your catering business menu? Post it on your site! If you have your own website, you can lessen or even completely do away with the traditional printed flyer. This not only cuts down on printing costs but also decreases paper wastage.
The fact is, opening up a website is simply a more cost-effective way to advertise what your company has to offer. You’re now open to a wider market which includes regular customers and even passive web surfers who can eventually realize that they need what you’re selling and that should be enough to help you decide.
About the Author
Ong Pang Seng is a professional E-Business consultant at Exxelnet Solutions Pte Ltd, leading Singapore SEO Company. Expert E-Business services include Web Hosting, Domain Name Registration, Web Development, Internet Marketing and Email Marketing.
How to Maximize the 5 Powerful Benefits of Article Marketing
By Ong Pang Seng
Is it worth to write article marketing? Or is it just a waste of your valuable time? The advent of internet has defied the typical method of promoting services, products and brands. Needless to say, the cost involved significantly drops.
The era of paying the newspaper and glossy magazines for ads begins to diminish already as people are now more dependent to internet. Everyone research everything in the internet from booking their airline tickets to purchasing the latest entertainment gizmos. In fact, the information available in the internet holds a strong power to influence and to dissuade the readers.
This is the reason that article marketing, which means writing informative articles and submitting it to various article directories, becomes a valuable strategy in promoting any business, services or products. However, sometimes article marketing, if not written appropriately, is less effective because search engine plays a vital role in the success of any article marketing effort.
To reap the reward of your effort to write many articles for the sole purpose of marketing, your articles must be ‘search engine friendly’. It means writing with proper keywords and using keyword rich phrases. You must also note the proper positioning of the keywords in the title and content. Applying proper search engine optimization (SEO) strategy in your article marketing can help you maximize the following benefits.
Showcasing Your Authority
People are always hungry for articles written by experts and writing articles about a particular subject matter gives you an opportunity to establish your authority for that certain field. Then your articles become a reliable source of information which in return boosts your credibility.
Global Exposure
Internet has no border and so does article marketing. The articles you publish will be available to everyone thus you are reaching readers across the globe.
Cost Effective
Submissions in article directories are for free. It does not cost you anything except for the time you spent in writing. This is one of the reasons that article marketing is a popular strategy used for promotion.
Key Traffic Driver
You will not believe it but using article marketing as a tool for promotion can exponentially escalate your exposure and boosts traffic to your website. Generally article directories have web feed which means any new articles are delivered to their RSS (Really Simple Syndication) subscriber.
Also, the articles available in the article directories are open for free publication for anybody provided that the author resource box and link is included. As a result, your article is exposed to their audience too.
Increase Web Presence
The more articles you write and publish, the more extensive is your web presence and all that articles come with the backlinks or known also as inbound links which lead back to your site. The backlinks can dictate the rife of your web presence and the result of search engine optimization (SEO).
The search engine considers the number of backlinks which are pointing to your site. The more backlinks lead to your site, the higher the possibility the search engine will consider you the authority of that particular niche. In return, it drives more traffic to your site.
Indeed there is no doubt that article marketing is very effective tool to promote and boost more traffic to your website. Nevertheless, always bear in mind the impact of SEO strategy to take advantage its maximum benefits.
About the Author
Ong Pang Seng is a professional E-Business consultant at Exxelnet Solutions Pte Ltd, top internet marketing and SEO Company in Singapore. Expert E-Business services include Web Hosting, Domain Name Registration, Web Development, Online Marketing and Email Marketing.
Using Analytics Visitor Data to Improve Your Site
By Jack Mack
When it comes to keeping your site working at optimum efficiency, Google Analytics is the ideal tool. It can provide comprehensive information and statistics on your sites traffic, competition, content and very usefully its visitors. Visitors become customers and customers are the very lifeblood of an ecommerce site. Analytics provides a comprehensive insight into how your visitors interact with your site.
Overview
The overview does exactly what it says. It provides an overview of the visitor’s information. Much of the sites crucial visitor information is condensed here to provide a general view of how your sites visitors are using it. This includes the number of visits, the number of page views and bounce rate among a selection of other features. Generally this is just used for a quick evaluation of your site.
Map Overlay
The map overlay allows you to see a geographical representation of your sites visitors. Through this you can determine where in the world your visitors are coming from. As a result you can tailor your site to suit its geographical popularity. For example, if you receive a lot of orders from abroad then you may want to provide offers on international shipping.
Languages
With the analytics language data you can determine the most common languages of those visiting your site. As a result you are once again able to focus your site based on this. If you receive a lot of foreign customers then you may want to create a system of language settings available on your site. Although most of the users will understand the language of your site it is an appreciated feature that will make your customers feel appreciated and will encourage them to come back again and again.
Visitor Trending & Visitor Loyalty
Here is where you will find the in depth analysis of your visitors that the overview only marginally touches on. With visitor trending you can boil down all aspects of visitor trends. You can then determine what days of the week visitors are most likely to use your site, what time of the month and even what month of the year. You can also determine the time that visitors spend on your site as well as the average page views. Visitor loyalty further assists you by gauging recence and length and depth of visits.
These are tools that make up only a section of Analytics usefulness. Used in conjunction with good website designers, analytics can be a major assistant to the SEO conducted on the site.
If you want to ensure that your ecommerce site is a success Google Analytics can be a very useful assistant.
As an SEO consultant Sam Qam has worked with a number of website designers.
Using Web Analytics – Why is it important?
Author: Jay Mann
How many visitors have you had to your web site today? Where (geographically) did they come from? At what time did you experience your heaviest traffic? Was your website accessed through a referral site or a search engine? These are the questions that you as a website developer/owner/operator should be asking. If you are simply seeking to improve traffic, or you want to determine how much to spend on advertising, web analytics are crucial. An excellent example of how useful a good analytics system can be is with e-commerce. If a website sells eggs at $40 per barrel, the webmaster can use analytics to determine if the people clicking on the sites ads are buying the $40 barrels of eggs. If he determines that the people coming from the ads are buying 10 barrels a day, he knows that the $200/month he spent on ads is definitely working out. He can then buy advertising more confidently and determine what percentage of his profit should go towards advertising. Answering the “who, what, when, where, and why” of those individuals accessing your site is also of critical importance. Through the proper use of web analytics you can shape and mold your business into an on-line power house and compete on any level. Let us use, for example, the simple statistic of traffic. After several months of following the web analysis of your provider on traffic you notice that visits to your site are highest in the middle of the month versus the beginning or the end. However, during the month of October you notice very little traffic at all. You begin to study and realize that you must be doing something different. You suddenly realize that during the previous months you had a radio ad that was running that you had cut because you felt it was not generating enough traffic. You quickly call the radio station and secure an open slot for December! This is one example of how web analytics provide a useful tool in the development and maintenance of your users. Using analytics can grant an easy edge over the competition, it is oftentimes overlooked and considered as a nice graph to look at. Those who concern themselves with the true understanding of these stats and apply them to their bottom line will find their sites much more effective. Do not underestimate the power of your web analytics. Use them to steer your on-line presence. You will be happy with your improved results!
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/using-web-analytics-why-is-it-important-1682264.html
About the Author:
Lytico makes complex SEO features easy for everyone to understand. Increase website traffic with Advanced Segmentation, Custom Reporting, Motion Charts, and more. For more information please visit us at: SEO Software, Search Engine Promotion
Local Search – Can We Find Your Business There?
by Kabir Bedi
Local Search is an emerging realm of online marketing. As people become more and more internet savvy, they are turning to the web for just about everything instead of looking through the Yellow Pages, it is so much more easier to simply run a Google Search. This is why it is incredibly important to have your business listed in the local search if you want to enhance your business visibility!
Talking about optimizing for local search, there are various factors that you need to consider like:
Size of the area as defined by the keyword search or Size of the map being viewed.
Listing on Google Business Center.
Google’s definition of the region’s center, either by keyword or map parameters like zoom level.
Local Search is not restricted to how search engined define the results. Rather, it also takes into account how the users and customers define them. For example, a business may be listed close to you but separated by a geographical barrier like a river or perhaps the national boundary that may limit the relevancy of the same to you. Likewise, a business may be miles away from you but it would be relevant to you if it is the nearest retailer that caters exactly to your requirements.
Here are some tips to inform Google and other mapping search engines about located:
List your address with the major data providers.
Claim your listing at the local business center.
Include reviews either at Google
List your business in the proper categories once it’s been claimed.
Apart from these, here are some other things that you should do:
Have Local People to Link to your Content
If you have a local business, chances are that you would have content that suits the interests of the local population as well. This might be a good reason to ask bloggers and other users to talk about it and link to your content. This would in turn increase the relevancy of your business for that particular location and earn you brownie points in the Local Search.
Remember Local SEO is as tough as SEO
Some people think that local SEO is cheaper than SEO on a broader scale just because the audience base is smaller in the first case. Local SEO is still SEO and it requires the same amount of work when it comes to optimizing it.
But they are Different
Even though both Local SEO and SEO require the same level of effort and dedication, optimizing your website for regular search does not cover for local search. Even if your website ranks well organically, it may appear further down the page only simply because Google’s use of Universal search. With this, the local results for the query often appear near the top of the listings.
In fact, the new redesign of search results pages that Google has been testing could have important impacts on local search. In the new design only 5 results appear as opposed to the seven that Google currently shows.
About the Author
Kabir Bedi works as a senior web consultant at LeXolution IT Services, a reputed web design company based in India, that specializes in providing a full range of web design services, website maintenance services and search engine optimization services. He has over 10 years of experience in the web industry.
How to Improve Google Ranking Via Google Keywords
I was pleasantly surprised when I found myself on the 1st page of the Google search engine with my keyword “online MLM lead”. I was not only listed no. 1 & no. 2 on the 1st page of Google but then again at no. 4, no. 6 & no 9 for that same keyword, a total of five times on the very first page of the Google organic (non-paid) searches. How did I improve Google ranking for this keyword phrase? Mainly through researching on the various Google search keywords and employing keyword optimization techniques.
Boy was I terribly excited! I had two articles and one YouTube video publicizing a screenshot of myself on that page where everyone who was searching for that particular keyword would be taken to. It is a huge advertisement, all for free.
Just researching on the top search word alone or on keyword popularity is not sufficient in getting you to rank high on Google. To effectively optimize your keywords, you need to know which keywords you want to concentrate on. How do you know which are the top Google search keywords and which should you pick? Read more…
Adopting SEO Strategy to Get Higher Search Engine Rankings
Internet is teeming with millions of websites and fierce online marketing has created the need to adopt special tactics to get noticed in the crowd. This special optimization technique is also called SEO strategy and is quite effective in getting higher search engine ranking for the website or webpage. It helps to divert more traffic to site and that means more business revenues for the site.
Developing the Right Content
A website needs a content matter to explain about itself, the product or service, goals, business objectives, etc to the audience. Whether it is a content website, product or service marketing website, etc, content is a requisite, to development of website. The readers go through the content first before making up their minds on, concluding an online deal or not. Content plays a crucial role in influencing the audience decisions. Hence the content has to be rich, engaging and able to relate the benefits that the site offers, with the needs of the audience. Search engine also like unique content and give it higher page rankings. So the SEO strategy aims to present a content that is appreciated by both, search engine and readers.
Selecting the Right Keywords
Keywords play pivotal role in ability of a site to get higher search engine ranking. Selecting the right keywords is crucial to give more visibility to the site on the net, jam packed with millions of the other websites. The Google keyword tool helps a lot in selecting the most probable keywords that are likely to be typed in by the surfers when they are searching a specific site or webpage. SEO strategy also gives prominence on maintaining the right keyword density to get a good SEO value for the content from the search engine. Overusing the keywords spoils the SEO value of the content and it is completely ignored by the engine. Usually the safe keyword density or percentage is about 1.5% to 2%. Placing the keyword in the title and the first paragraph is important part of SEO strategy to get noticed easily and thus get higher search engine ranking. The keywords should be evenly placed through out the content body so that the search engine can easily navigate through the site without any problems.
Attracting Attention
The main aim of the SEO strategy is to attract the attention of the spider. It is a very good practice to submit the site to the popular directories because they are well accessed by the popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The site here gets indexed and traffic is automatically routed to it. Using the resource box efficiently helps to build links with customers and other sites. Using viral marketing techniques like advertising on social networking sites, free of cost, attracts lot of visitors to the site. As more and more visitors hit the site and stay for longer period in it, the popularity of the site increases greatly. This attracts the attention of the spider that indexes it and gives the site a higher search engine ranking.
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