HTML errors affecting SEO

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Invalid HTML code which has errors within it can affect your search engine ranking. Some Web Designers, and clients alike don’t always realize how much simple page errors can cause a search engine spider to incorrectly index a page or skip the page altogether. Checking your code and links is always a must.

Bad code can hurt your site with the search engines in several ways. Search engines score a page by looking for relevant terms in key HTML components in specific places within a document. If they don’t find them because of typos or other mistakes, the spiders can downgrade your page or leave without reading your whole page.

Incorrect document structure such as a badly placed tags like META tags and TITLE tags can cause search engine spiders to ignore the tag completely, reducing your relevancy score and subsequent ranking.

What about simple typo errors rather than coding errors? Say you typed TILTE instead of TITLE for your TITLE tag. Search engines place high importance on text contained in a TITLE tag. If you make such a typo, the search engine will ignore the tag completely and all of it’s contents!

Other errors on your page can also limit how search engine spiders index your site. Broken links act as roadblocks to the spiders. Search engine spiders index text and follow links. If they come to your site and encounter broken links, they won’t be able to fully crawl your site and they may abandon it.

So, if your thinking of commissioning a website, or if your a website designer building a site, don’t forget  correct coding, and a quick spell check can make all the difference between a top ten listing, and not being found at all.

More information can be found at: W3C – World Wide Web Consortium