Which Design Code is Best for Search Engine Optimization?
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HTML Is The Best Code For SEO
HTML is king when it comes to search engine optimization. The majority of websites on the Internet are HTML sites. Lately, there are more PHP sites showing up but PHP, by nature, is not SEO friendly. Java scripts and Flash may look good and can really jazz up a website, but they are totally ignored by the search engine spiders. The use of "iframes" is another practice that confuses the search engines. It makes it hard for them to analyse the websites link structure.
The truth of the matter is that the less code you use, the more search engine friendly your website will be.
Code tags get in the way of the search engine spiders and make their job more difficult. Despite this fact, proper use of HTML tags can actually improve your search engine ranking. You want to limit your use of tables and try to incorporate CSS (cascading style sheets) when ever possible. This will put a lot of the information for your sites "window dressing" at the top of the page and out of the <body> </body> tags. It will also remove a lot of unnecessary code for fonts and font properties. You want your HTML to be light and clean.
The Problem With PHP
PHP is an awesome time saving tool for webmasters. It creates dynamic web pages that let you make "global" changes by altering just one file. This gives you incredible flexibility and lets you create some very nice web sites. The problem is that PHP is not search engine friendly.
HTML is browser based and creates "static" pages. Your web browser reads the file and converts it into what you see. PHP is server based and creates "dynamic" pages. The information that is presented is contained on the server. The PHP code tells the browser to "get" information from the server which is normally contained in a data base. (most likely MYSQL)
This is where the problems start to occur. The process adds "get" variables and session id numbers to the url's. The search engine spiders don't like this and sometimes you have different url's with the same content. This creates confusion for the spiders and they may skip over pages and not index them at all.
I am not a PHP programmer but I am teaching myself a little PHP because I have a safelist script that I use and I want to be able to make changes on my own without paying a programmer. I know that there are ways around these SEO problems but they are much more involved than SEO with HTML and I am not the person to explain them.
If terms like "htaccess", "parsing ", "loop code", and "trans_sid", leave you with a blank glazed over stare, it is best to leave SEO for PHP to the experts. If you want to find out how to optimize your HTML for the search engines then keep on reading.
Using HTML For Search Engine Optimization
There are 2 main categories of SEO. Onpage optimization and Offpage optimization:
Offpage optimization deals mostly with creating back links to your website through various means such as submitting your website to directories or submitting articles, with links to your website, to article directories. There are a lot of more advanced methods but these are 2 of the easiest and most popular. This kind of search engine optimization is based on creating "authority" for your website. The search engines feel that a site that a lot of people are linking to must have some relevant content. This kind of optimization requires a lot of time and effort.
Onpage optimization is about optimizing your website structure so that it is more search engine friendly. This is where the use of HTML tags can be very helpful when used properly. There are 2 areas of your website that you need to address:
- The area between the <head></head> tags.
- The area between the <body></body> tags.
Between The <head></head> Tags
The information between the head tags is not visible to your visitors only the search engine spiders. These are commonly called the "meta" tags. They contain pertinent information about your website. There is much discussion as to the importance of the meta tags. Most SEO experts agree that they do not pull as much weight as they used to but they should not be ignored. When it comes to SEO, every little thing counts.
The only item that is visible to your readers will be the information contained in the <title> </title> tags. The information between these tags will show across the top of the browser window and is considered to be one of the most important elements of onpage optimization. Your title should contain your primary targeted keyword phrase and should make sense when read. Do not try to "keyword stuff" your title. If you use multiple keyword phrases, limit it to 2 or 3 and separate them with the pipe ( | ) symbol or a hyphen. The ideal title is a sentence that uses several of your primary keywords and reads smoothly.
The meta tags that you want to make sure are present is the meta description the meta keywords, and the meta robots tag. These will look something like this in your HTML code:
<meta name="description" content="This is where you will put a brief but accurate description of what your website is about. Normally, this is what will be displayed in the search engine listing.">
<meta name="keywords" content="This is where you list all of your relevant keywords and keyword phrases separated by commas. Do not list the same keyword over and over again or you will be penalized.">
<meta name="robots" content="follow, all"> (This is how you want yours to look. There are some advanced things you can do here, but if your website is new, you want all of the robots, or spiders, to follow all content and links on your site.)
If you use a program like Dream Weaver (my favorite) or Front Page, these meta tags, along with some others will probably be automatically generated. You will just need to modify them.
Between The <body></body> Tags
Use your "heading" tags, <H1>, <H2>, <H3>, etc..., for SEO purposes. It will also make your website more readable and organized if you separate your content with sub headings.
<H1> should only be used once and should contain your primary keyword or phrase that you are targeting.
<H2> can be used more than once and should contain secondary keywords that you wish to target.
<H3> is used the same as the <H2> tag. It is not necessary to use this tag but I recommend using at least one of each on your index page.
These are the major onpage optimization techniques that you should be using on your website at a minimum. It is amazing the amount of websites that do not take advantage of these simple techniques. You will definitely have an advantage over most of your competition if you implement these techniques. Keep reading to learn so more helpful tidbits.
More Onpage Optimization Techniques
Use Emphasis To Show Importance:
Using bold and italics is a great way to draw attention to items on your website. It is best to use these tags to bring attention to keywords and keyword phrases that are within the text of your content. This may seem insignificant but helps the spiders determine the theme of your website.
The tags that you want to use are:
<strong> </strong> place text in between these to bold them.
<em> </em> place text in between these to italicise them.
A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words
Not only do pictures make your website look better, you can use them to boost your search engine rankings as well. Whenever you use a picture on your website, you can assign an <alt> tag to the picture which basically gives the picture a name. You can use your relevant keywords, that best describe the picture, in your <alt> tags and provide "eye candy" for the search engine spiders as well as your website visitors.
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Cascading Style Sheets
Commonly known as CSS, lets you store a good portion of your HTML in a seperate text file. The file will include all the code for your font sizes and styles, background colors, border styles, and the particulars for your heading tags.
There way to much info for me to cover here, but if you are a webmaster, you should seriously learn how to use CSS. It will clean up your code and make your websites a breeze for the search engine spiders to index, which will keep them coming back again and again.
SEO Bonus Info
OK, this has nothing to do with your code, but a lot to do with onpage optimization. Whenever possible, you should build the following web pages for your website and provide links to them on every page.
- Contact Us
- Terms of Service
- Privacy Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer (where applicable)
This provides "proof of authority" for the search engines and will have a definite effect on your search engine rankings. It will also have a beneficial effect on your pay per click costs, so make sure you put them on your landing pages too.
The Design Code Rap - SEO Do's And Don'ts
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bigdaddy, hello! enjoyed your article. regardless of how many HTML editor softwares there are (they put out so much "dirty" code), pure, old-fashioned (POF) HTML coded by hand still rules. we who know how to code the POF HTML by hand are a dying breed. knowing how to do some CGI in Perl, JavaScripts and CSS doesn't hurt, eh?Thanks for your article, good stuff.
This article is very true. Sometimes the more you pay for your web design, the less effective your Search Engine Optimization is. Thats why I prefer making simple html sites.
BigDaddy,
This is a really informative and useful hub. You've got yourself another fan!
Big Daddy you have given me so much SEO and coding help here! I can't believe I didn't notice your response hub until now.
Great job here. The info regarding the use of HTML for SEO was especially useful.
Thanks!
This hub is filled with useful information- large amount of new information for me. Thanks for the great hub! SEO is such a game it seems- I'm constantly playing around trying to manipulate code and use different methods- going to try some new things thanks to your hub.
Good info. Like you illustrate, it's all about the details. If you pay attention to more than just the copy, you'll be far ahead of the average. I like your example about alt image tags and using bolding a few times.
Regarding php: php is fine for seo if you know how to use Apache's rewrite_engine module. The rewrite_engine is a very powerful tool, since it can use regular expressions to customize how you treat your urls.... This means not only will your urls be user friendly, but you can also handle moving content to new files, but keeping the same url and things like that. The rewrite_engine takes a while to learn. If you want to see how it works, set up a Wordpress site and check the seo friendly url button, then look in your .htaccess file
Thanks for the info Web D Zine, but I know nothing about PHP. I started to teach myself but just really don't have the time. I pay someone to do my PHP work.
Meta keywords isnt that important these days. Even google guidelines do not mention meta keywords tag anywhere. On the other hand Meta Description is more powerful.
As far as on-page SEO goes, you should not make your website stick to any php,asp or any other extensions. Try removing these extensions. It will help in the long term.
Take for example, if you decide to change your website from PHP to some newer version of PHP say PHD then it is going to be a mamoth task for you as a developer + SEO to change each url into phd.
Keep urls simple and clean.
I agree about the meta keywords but every little bit helps and Google isn't the only game in town. I also agree about the PHP. That is why I said that html is the best code for SEO.
I think a lot of people neglect the onpage SEO stuff which is the easiest to implement.
Thanks for the advice. Bookmarked this page for future use. Thanks!!!
CJensen says:
18 months ago
Regarding PHP, I think I would probably agree since it does tend to be forms based. A better alternative would be an option like ASP.net which is also server side, but uses a methodology that more closely resembles desktop application programming. What this means is that you can write code that loads data into the HTML at runtime rather than having to resort to using get and post form methods. Because of this to the bots and spiders, there will be no difference between straight HTML and a page generated by ASP.net