The first response that may spring to mind when asked this question is – why should I care about HTML validation?, hopefully the reasons below will provide a compelling answers to this question (and hopefully get you to validate your html !) :

• Search engine optimisation – if your pages include html errors this may make it difficult for spiders to crawl your site, the knock on effect of this may be that your site does not get indexed as quickly or as completely as you would like. As, for most people, the majority of traffic comes from the search engines this is obviously a very bad thing.
• Eradicate broken links – Broken links can not only be a deterrent to your visitors ( both in terms of looking unprofessional also preventing them accessing what they want to access) but also impair your indexing in the search engines – if the links are broken or incorrect then a spider will not be able to follow them.
• Faster / Better page loads – if a page contains errors then it may not load as quickly or completely as an error free page. It also may not fare as well in terms of cross browser compatibility. Any issues that affect site speed must be taken seriously as they will affect user perception of the site (and therefore may affect user retention, likelihood of purchases etc)
• Perception of quality – if you have undergone a html validation process then you should not have errors or incorrect presentation on your page – two things that can seriously damage the perception of your site.
• Backwards compatibility – Properly written HTML is more likely to be compatible with future versions of web browsers as and when they are released (code that not had any html validation is extremely unlikely to have such compatibility)
• Compliance with Standards – it is becoming increasingly important for sites to be compliant with the various web access / presentation standards – valid html will help achieve this.
• WYSIWYG bloating – many, but not all, WYSIWYG editors can introduce extra code into web pages, validation should help identify and remove extra, unrequired code from pages.
• Reduce effort – an html validator will help to spot errors early on hence eradicate them quickly and efficiently. They should also help to pinpoint exactly where the error lies within the html code.

So if you accept the fact that html validation is a positive thing to do then what is the best way of carrying out the validation?- I would recommend the use of a html validator online – by using online html validation you avoid the need to download tools to your pc, they are usually free and the responsibility for keeping them up to date lies with someone else.

Website content is hijacked for three main reasons:-

1)     To copy the content onto another website (or even to copy the design / layout itself)

2)     To harvest email addresses to be used to send spam to.

3)     To discover / steal payment links so that site payment mechanisms can be circumvented and product, in effect, stolen.

Perhaps the most common of the above is the harvesting of email addresses by so called spam bots. These bots can navigate your site, read the content, identify all the email addresses contained within the content and store them in databases so they can later be bombarded with spam email.

The second most common is the harvesting (i.e. stealing) of content so it can be re-used on other sites. It may just be the content that is stolen or it may be the entire site including design, layout, menus etc. Whilst this may seem like a back handed compliment the theft of your hard work should not be tolerated (and having too much duplicate content around the web may harm your search engine rankings !).

The least common but perhaps most worrying is the stealing of payment links so that they can be circumvented and sales or commissions stolen.

There are several methods of protecting your code in order to prevent theft, these include the use of various scripts (usually JavaScript) to prevent right click functionality and hence prevent users viewing site source code, Whilst somewhat effective this method does not prevent the use of automatic software (or bots) to harvest content – the best way to prevent this is to encrypt html source code.

The phrase “encrypt html source code” may conjure up fear in many people as it sounds very complicated but in reality html encrypting has become very easy as there are now many tools available online that will do the html encrypting for you without the need for any technical skills. So in essence how to encrypt html is very simple :-

1)     Go online and find a html encrypter tool (this may also be known as an html lock tool)

2)     Copy your existing html code into the html encryption tool

3)     The tool will output some encrypted html

4)     Paste this into your web page (replacing the existing code)

5)     You now have an encrypted html page !

You may wish to carry out this procedure for all your pages in your site or you may choose to only encrypt certain, high importance pages. It is best to do this on a proactive basis rather than wait until your site has been compromised – it is too late then !.

Html encryption will not affect your search engine rankings nor will it affect how the spiders view or crawl your site.

We woil drecommend Our FREE HTML Lock Tool to help you encrypt your HTML

In order to produce a comprehensive set of meta tags you could create then all by hand however it is perhaps best to consider the use of a meta tag generator for such a task. A tag generator (or meta generator) helps to automate the process.

So what types of tags does a meta tags creator produce? .

1)      The title tag – this is a vital tag and one that every meta tag generator should produce. It sets the title that is shown both in the search engines and in the top of the browser window. It is important in SEO as it is a key indicator of the content of the page itself. The title tag should contain your major keywords for the page.

2)      Meta keywords tag – this is a list of keywords that are relevant to the webpage, there is debate as to the usefulness of this tag with respect to SEO but should be included. Every meta tag creator should produce this tag as standard.

3)      Meta description – this contains the follow description of your site and is what appears in the search results pages in the search engines. This tag should contain all the major keywords for your site but in human readable form rather than a simple list.

4)      Meta robots – the robots tag determines how search engine robots view and index your site so it is very important that you do not make any mistakes with this one (otherwise you may end up telling the search engine spiders that you do not want them to index your site !). In essence the tag sets two attributes for your site, these are as follows :-

index / noindex – the noindex attribute tells the spiders that you do not wish search engine spiders to index the page (therefore it will never appear in search engine results !). The index attribute has the opposite effect.

follow / nofollow – the nofollow tag tells the spiders that you do not want them to follow any links that they find on the page (you may wish to do this on a page that only contains links to external sites for example). The follow tag has the opposite effect.

A similar effect to the above tags can be achieved through the use of the robots.txt file (which is covered in a separate article) and this is the most commonly method of implementing such features.

Hopefully the above descriptions demonstrate the power and usefulness of meta tags and the importance of having them set up correctly. In order to achieve this correct setup it is advisable to use a meta tag generator, this will help to ensure that the format and structure of the tags are set up in an acceptable and consistent fashion.

Click here to use Our FREE meta tag generator

Whilst considering responses it is important to take into account the balance that must be struck – on one hand comments are important to your blog and should be encouraged, on the other hand nobody wants to read a blog that is little more than a collection of spammy comments.

There are 6 possible methods of filtering out spam comments :-

1) Manual Moderation (approval) of comments – the most basic approach is that the blog owner reviews each comment and approves (or otherwise) it prior to publication. Time consuming but very effective.

2) Use of Captcha codes prior to posting – this requires a random number or word to be entered prior to a comment being submitted. Whilst this will be effective against spam comments posted by software tools it will not stop a determined manual poster. Captcha codes can be implemented via various plugins.

3) Use of blacklists – there are plugins available that will examine the source of comments and automatically bar them if they originate from known spam addresses.

4) Word based filtering – again tools are available that examine the content of the post and look for trigger words (e.g. sexual, pharmaceutical etc) and then bar the content if they are found.

5) Heuristic – there are “artificial intelligence” tools that look at user behaviour, content of post etc and “decide” if a post is spam or not.

6) Implement “no follow” attributes on your blog – whilst this does not prevent comment spam it discourages spammers as they do not get the backlinks they are looking for.

Whilst there are many approaches and tools available there is no real substitute and the overall recommendation is the combined use of the above tools but always backed up by a final manual moderation.

Whilst Google dominates the search market (with around 68% market share) there is still a sizeable chunk of the search market (approx 32%) that falls outwith Google. The main other search players are as follows

1) Yahoo – around 16% of total search volume still goes through Yahoo.

2) MSN/Windows Live Search/Bing – although only around 10% of total searches go through MSN/Windows Live Search/Bing this amount is growing month on month.

3) AOL – around 3% of the search market

4) ASK – only around 1% of searches now go through ASK.

5) The rest (e.g. My Web, Comcast, Yellow Pages etc) – only comprise 2% of the total search market when combined.

As can be seen from the above figures it is only really MSN/Windows Live Search/Bing and Yahoo that it would appear to be worthwhile expending any effort in optimizing your site for. The rest of the engines only comprise 6% of the market and hence, whilst your site should be listed in these directories, they are not worth specifically optimising for. Perhaps the best approach for this group of engines is to use an automatic search engine submission tool.

One other directory that is worth mentioning, even though it does not appear in the list of top search providers, is DMOZ.org. DMOZ is a human edited directory (as opposed to a search engine) and provides results to many other engines and directories and therefore it is worth the effort of a manual submission.

In order to answer this question you must first understand how a search engine  finds your web pages and how do you make this process easy for them (after all you want to get all your pages into their results so you should make this process as easy as you can !)

The process of web page discovery is carried out by “spiders” (automated software tools that search the web) during a process known as “crawling”.  The spiders find new content by following links found within sites or from external sites. The following of links aspect of the process is the critical element of answering the question why a sitemap is important – if the spiders cannot find the links easily then they cannot be followed and your content will essentially become invisible to the search engines.

Having a sitemap for your site clearly signposts to the visiting spiders where all your pages are and what the link structure is between them. This facilitates the spidering process and helps to ensure that all your pages are indexed.

Without a sitemap you run the risk of some of your pages not being discovered, and it goes without saying that if a page has not even been discovered then it is impossible for it to rank well in the results !.

There are many tools available to generate (and validate) sitemaps so production and maintenance of sitemaps should not be too much of an overhead and ceratainly the production of a sitemap is an extremely worthwhile activity.

Backlink checkers – verify backlinks to your site, check what anchor text they are using and just generally ensure that your backlink campaign is on track.

Link Analyzer – anlayze your inbound and outbound links to make sure all is well, also to be used to that often over looked task – verification of internal links within the site itself.

Keyword density checker – make sur ethat your pages have the correct keyword density and that you do not look like your are “keyword stuffing” your pages just to get high rankings.

Position checker – make sure that your SEO campaigns are effective and you are climbing up those positions !

URL Submitter – a vital tool to take the leg work out of submitting your site to potentially hundreds of search engines.

Social Web tools – check that links to your site are appearing on the social network sites (Twitter, FaceBook etc)

Website Speed Test – there is no point in marketing your site if it does not respond in a timely fashion – visitors will simply not wait !

Source Code tools – CSS validator, HTML validator etc – these may seem like technical tools but poor HTML and CSS can harm your rankings (as well as delivering a poor visitor experience)

Meta Tag Generator – meta tags are important in your ranking efforts and such tools are useful to help make sure you get then right

Spider Emulator / checker – you should always make sure that your site looks OK when viewed from the perspective of a search engine spider. These tools give you a useful insight in how spiders see your site and help you correct any potential errors.

Search engine spiders are automated software agents (often known as “bots”) that search the internet on a regular and controlled basis in order to discover new sites, pages and information (this process is commonly known as “crawling”)

They carry out these searches by following the hyperlinks they find within sites and pages (hence the importance of site links and backlinks – they are the signposts that the spiders follow whilst they are crawling the web).

The search engines use spiders not only to discover new sites and pages to be included in their search results but also to discover the number of links that  there are for a particular site or page. The discovery of these backlinks normally constitutes an important part of how a page is ranked within the search results.

When a spider visits or crawls a site it first looks for a “robots.txt” file as this contains important instructions for visiting robots that tell them which sections of the site to crawl, how often to visit and other important information – it is therefore important that you have an up to date robots.txt file that is in spider readable form – there are tools available to check this.

As spiders look for links having a sitemap is really useful as it provides all the links in a one stop shop for the spiders to access in an easy fashion. Anything that facilitates the efficient spidering of your site is to be recommended and sitemaps certainly fall into this category. Again there are tools available to generate and validate your sitemaps.

1) To protect your copyright – you may have html code or content that you do not want others to use and therefore you may want to use html encrypting to protect your intellectual property.

2) You may simply want to prevent others seeing hwo you have done your on page seo – by placing a html lock on your code this will prevent prying eyes from examining your on page seo efforts.

So to protect your source code use our free html encrypter.

For these reasons it is important that you run your pages and sites through a HTML validator – ours is free so why not give it a go !