Every
Search Engine Robot Needs Validation
Daria Goetsch
Search Innovation
October 14, 2002
Your website is ready. Your content is in place,
you have optimized your pages. What is the last
thing you should do before uploading your hard
work? Validate. It is surprising how many people
do not validate the source code of their web pages
before putting them online.
Search engine robots are automated programs that
traverse the web, indexing page content and following
links. Robots are basic, and robots are definitely
not smart. Robots have the functionality of early
generation browsers: they don't understand frames;
they can't do client-side image maps; many types
of dynamic pages are beyond them; they know nothing
of JavaScript. Robots can't really interact with
your pages: they can't click on buttons, and they
can't enter passwords. In fact, they can only
do the simplest of things on your website: look
at text and follow links. Your human visitors
need clear, easy-to-understand content and navigation
on your pages; search engine robots need that
same kind of clarity.
Looking at what your visitors and the robots
need, you can easily see how making your website
"search engine friendly", also makes the website
visitor friendly.
For example, one project I worked on had many
validation problems. Because of the huge number
of errors generated by problems in the source
code, the search engine robots were unable to
index the web page, and in particular, a section
of text with keyword phrases identified specifically
for this page. Ironically, human users had problems
with the page as well. Since humans are smart,
they could work around the problem, but the robots
could not. Fixing the source code corrected the
situation for human and automated visitors.
There are several tools available to check your
HTML code. One of the easiest to use is published
by the W3C (http://validator.w3.org/).
While you're there, you can also validate your
CSS code at W3C's page for CSS (http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/).
The reports will tell you what source code needs
to be fixed on your web page. One extra or unclosed
tag can cause problems. With valid code, you make
it easier for your human visitors and search engine
robots can travel through your website and index
your pages without source code errors stopping
them in their tracks. How many times have you
visited a website, only to find something broken
when going through the web pages? Too many too
count, I'm sure. Validating your pages makes everything
easier for your website to get noticed.
As I said before, what works for your website
visitors works for the search engine robots. Usability
is the key for both your human visitors and automated
robots. Why not provide the best chance for optimum
viewing by both?
About the Author:
Daria Goetsch is the founder and Search Engine
Marketing Consultant for Search Innovation Marketing
(http://www.searchinnovation.com),
a Search Engine Promotion company serving small
businesses. Besides running her own company, Daria
is an associate of WebMama.com, an Internet web
marketing strategies company. She has specialized
in search engine optimization since 1998, including
three years as the Search Engine Specialist for
O'Reilly & Associates, a technical book publishing
company.
Copyright © 2003 Search Innovation Marketing.
All Rights Reserved.
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