SEO Optimization Tip - Valid HTML, XHTML

When optimizing websites for SEO, one of the things overlooked by most companies and web designers/developers is using valid HTML and XHTML.

Consider your website's code like handwriting. If someone had to had to scan over a lot of writing in a short time, there is a chance that they would not be able to absorb as much information from a paper will sloppy handwriting vs. a paper with neat and organized handwriting.

The same can be said for the crawlers that come visit your site. They have to go through possibly billions of pages, and chances are, they will not spend too much time on a page where they cannot decipher the content due to bad, unorganized coding. A page with clean, organized code is likely to be crawled from the header to the footer.

One place to check your site's code to make sure it is valid is using the free markup validation tool by W3C, pictured above. This site will give you warnings, errors, and suggested ways to correct the incorrect code in question.

Even if you are not able to immediately clean up the code throughout your site right away, at least take a look at the errors and learn proper coding for new pages.

Plugging the "NoFollow" Leak

One of the most popular topics recently in SEO is the change in how Google is treating nofollow links. Here is a video by SEOMoz about how to "plug" the nofollow leak.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - How Do We Plug the Nofollow Leak? from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

How To Gain Backlinks Via Blog Commenting

One way to gain backlinks is through commenting on blog articles. Although it sounds simple, there are a few things you need to look for and simple rules to follow.

• Website/URL - First, you will need to see if the blog's comment form allows you to enter your URL. Some sites either do not have this option, make you register for their site, have you login through Facebook, Disqus, or other means where the link to your name in the comments will only take someone to a profile on other sites, as opposed to the URL you are trying to build backlinks.



• DoFollow - Most blogs specifically have a "nofollow" attribute on the URL, which means that although your named will be linked to the URL you enter, it will not be "seen" by search engines, and therefore will do no good in terms of linkbuilding. What you are looking for are sites that offer DoFollow links. One way to find DoFollow blogs is to search the Do Follow Blogs and Do Follow Blog List directories.


One way to tell is to use the Firefox plugin NoDoFollow. Once installed, you can simply right click on a blog article with comments and select NoDoFollow. If the commenters' links are highlighted with purple for dofollow, then the links will be recognized by search engines.


• Keyword Luv - Some blogs with dofollow have a specific option that allows you to enter Your Name @ Your Keywords. This way, you are able to use specific anchor text, such as Jeff @ Spa Covers, for your links, boosting the keyword value. Although you can just put your name as Spa Covers, some sites (usually ones with a specific comment policy) frown upon this and may not approve your comment, flagging it as spam.



• Relevant Comments - Speaking of spam, another way to look like a spammer is to place irrelevant comments on articles, or comments that are so vague that they could apply to any article. Be sure to at least skim over the article and write a valuable comment, aside from "wow, what a great post" kind of comment.

4 Free Keyword Research Tools

Here are some free tools that you can utilize for keyword research.

Free Keyword Term Suggestion Tool By KeywordDiscovery.com - Generates the top 100 keywords related to your entry. Additional results are available with a subscription.

Google AdWords: Keyword Tool - Allows you to generate keyword ideas based on your entry. The results can be sorted by popularity, and exported in .txt or .csv format. You can alternatively enter a URL of a site whose keywords you wish to analyze as well.

Google Insights for Search - Allows you to enter a keyword and see it's popularity during specific time ranges, and in specific regions.

Keyword Density - SEO Tools - Allows you to enter the URL of a site and analyze the keyword density. Good tool to use to make sure you are achieving optimum keyword density on your website.

5 Basic HTML Tags & Markups for SEO Optimization

Whenever you are designing your website, be sure to use these basic HTML tags & markups for SEO optimization.

Title Tag - Be sure to create a descriptive <title> tag for each page on your website. A good example of this would be Company Name | Description of this Page. Titles should be no more than 65 characters long.

Meta Tags - For each page, you can have a custom Meta Description, which is a 200 - 250 character summary of the content on the page, and Meta Keywords, which are the keywords for that page. Keep in mind you should not do any keyword stuffing, or placing tons of keywords that are not related to your content, in your meta tags.

Header Tags - Use header tags (h1, h2, h3, etc.) on your pages. For example, the main page title could be placed in the <h1> tags, and then key points/dividers throughout your page could be placed within the <h2> and <h3> tags.

Formatting Tags - Highlighting keywords on your page using the <strong> tag will place emphasis on them when search engine crawlers are checking your site's content.

Alt Tags - Include alt tags for images on your website. A good description of your image within the alt tag could help it place well in the Google Image Search results. For example, if you have a dog grooming business, and you put a photograph of a freshly groomed Schnauzer on your website, a good alt tag would be "Miniature Schnauzer Haircut" rather than "Dog Grooming" or something else less specific.

Search Engine Optimization Vs. End User Optimization

In this video, Matt Cutts discusses the pros and cons of designing websites for search engine and for users.

How to Get Your Link Exchange Reciprocated Correctly

One of the SEO, or search optimization, benefits of link exchanges is receiving a “vote” to your site using specific keywords.  The way to gain this vote is to use anchor text for the link to your site. 

For example, if your website is called companyname.com and you sell sliding doors, then you would want your website to come up in search results when some types in the keywords “sliding doors” as opposed to having to know your company by name.  One of the ways to do this is to get quality backlinks from other sites using the anchor text of “sliding doors” to link to your website.

Whenever you send or receive a link exchange request, the best method to use is to specify exactly how you would like your link to appear on the reciprocal or three-way link page.  To do this using the example site, simply send the linking details as follows:

Title: Sliding Doors (use this as the anchor text to link to the URL)

URL: http://www.companyname.com

Description: Company Name sells quality sliding doors at affordable prices.

This should help eliminate any confusion as to how you want your link to appear, and helps novice webmasters add your link correctly, as opposed to just putting the URL or some other text as the link to your page.