The Kabbalah of Search Engine Positioning
Welcome to the Second installment of The Kabalah of Search Engine Positioning.
My name is Brent Sims. My favorite phrase is “Sometimes we miss the basic simplicities of things”. Why, well, because sometimes we miss the basic simplicities of things…
A web page, at its most basic level, is just a text file that contains instructions which tell the viewer’s web browsers how the text, the images and whatever else is used to make up the web page should be displayed.
A web browser, for example, knows that the HTML paragraph a marks the beginning of a paragraph. A web browser also knows that the HTML end paragraph tag marks the end of a paragraph.
While a search engine may or may not put any stock in any or all of the tags that tell a web browser how the web page should be displayed, the very nature of indexing a web page requests a search engines to deal with both the contents of the file (that is text, the images, and whatever else is used to make up the web page) as well as the instructions regarding how the contents should be displayed.
The mechanics of how this is done are actually quite simple. The client, that is the search engine or the web browser, sends a get request: “GET this file name” and the server sends that file to the client. The client then receives that file, beginning to end, and it then does whatever it has been programmed to do with the file it received.
This process, in fact, is quite similar to that of picking up the phone and placing an order for something to be delivered. You, the client, would place your GET request by making the phone call. The company you call, the server, would locate or create whatever it was that you ordered, and then they’d ship it to you. If everything works as planned in a short time the item you ordered will be delivered and you’ll then be able to do with it as you please.
You would, of course, expect the item to be properly packaged and you’d most certainly expect to receive a reasonable facsimile of whatever it was that ordered.
As I have stated before and will most certainly state again, if you give the search engines what they want the search engines will give you what you want.
The search engines may or may not pay any attention to some or all of the instructions contained in a web page that tell web browsers how to display the content of that web page. The nature of indexing a web page, however, is such that the search engine doing the indexing must deal with both the instructions and the content of the web page being indexed.
It stands to reason that making the task of dealing with the instructions and the content that make up a web page as easy as possible for both search engines and browsers is not going to produce results worse than making the task as difficult as possible would.
And this is another very important aspect of the Kabbalah of Search Engine positioning.
Optimize your HTML.
The easiest way I know to get started is to point your browser at http://validator.w3.org – click on the HTML Validator menu link, run a page of your web site through the validator and then start fixing what’s broke.
Please note that I’m suggesting that you optimize your HTML. While it won’t hurt to make your HTML validate, the primary goal of this exercise is to remove errors from the pages in your web site that will or which might negatively affect the page’s results on the search engines, and to implement strategies and code that might improve the page’s results on the search engines.
In a nutshell, a search engine may or may not concern itself with whether or not a page conforms to the HTML whatever standard. Errors in the instructions (the HTML code) on the page, however, May very well and often do affect the results presented during an applicable user initiated search.
The HTML Validator at w3.org also has a nifty feature which presents tips and suggestions for improving the functionality of a web page that was ran through the Validator. While many of these tips only apply to the viewer’s experience, one must not – can not ignore the big picture.
What is the big picture?
The popularity of your web site enters into the search engine positioning equation in a very big way these days. Fast loading, smooth running pages that display properly for all viewers will certainly not make your web site any less popular, will they?
Thank you for listening. And may the force be with you.