What is a Google search engine and how do they work?

SEARCH Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a complicated technique to master, even for webmasters. I am not a webmaster, so please take at face value what I am going to share with you today.

Try to google “seo” and the top four results will likely show, in ascending order, three Google advertisements Optimization by wikipedia.org. Without going anywhere — meaning on the same web page — “the process of increasing the quality and quantity website or a web page to users of a web search engine.” If you need more elaboration, or if you are like me who does not quite fully understand what are you will scroll farther down for other search results. Or, not having enough time to wander around, you may click the advertised websites and click the links that will bring you to the products or services being offered, which can be expected to have something to do with SEO, such as web hosting or offers of SEO services. Anytime you click the advertised link or links, Google, through its Adwords, makes money.

( Google tells the advertiser that somebody clicked your link and its costs you, say, $1. Search keywords are auctioned off among advertisers, take it or leave it. For keywords that command stiff competition, like weight loss and anti-aging, advertisers can pay as much as $3 to $5 for every click.)

information you got from Google Search, in this you will return to google the next time you feel like poking around for information from the internet.

In a nutshell, that is how search engines work and why they spend huge money to make sure you keep coming back. Google Search has earned its reputation as highly sensitive to user experience, which explains why more users prefer its search engine over that of Yahoo or Bing. (Google commands 90 percent of all desktop searches worldwide; 92 percent for mobile searches.) 

How do search engines meet users’ expectation? Google has been using a complex and ever evolving process of delivering search results, but the main idea has stayed the same: to provide its users original and high-quality content. How does Google know if a website’s content is of high quality? There are many ways, and new ones are coming up everyday, either to enhance its processes or to “police” SEO cheats. (To the horror of not a few website owners, money-making and highly monetized websites that have been ranking high in search results for months can disappear the next day, and many of them might not know what happened.) 

The more widely known factors by which quality of website content can be determined are user engagement and the so-called backlinks. If you are a website administrator and you link your website to Google Analytics (like Google Search, Google Analytics is a free service) or from the control panel of your webhost, you can access the following information: who visited your website (visitors are called

- verse they visited, when the visit took place, which page or pages of your website were visited, and how long the visitor stayed in each page of your website. The analytics also reveals the IP (short for Internet Protocol) address used by the visitor. Therefore you have a way of knowing if the visitor was unique or one who returns to visit at quite an unusual interval or frequency, which can prompt search engines to (short for web robots). Needless to say, if your visiit will tell Google that the content of your website is of high quality. To this end giants like Facebook and Google have invested billions in apps to tempt their users to prolong their stay on their pages. Facebook, for example, has Messenger, Games and, lately, Dating; Google has legion of free apps as well — Gmail, Maps, Images, Search Engine and another giant, YouTube, just to name a few. Alexa in fact ranks them at the top (Google at number one, YouTube at number two, and Facebook at number 6, Wikipedia at number 9) among billions of websites worldwide that attract the most of user engagement. 

Another key factor for ranking high in search engine results is called backlinks. When I cited Wiki

I consider its content to be of high quality. When this article gets posted online and a hyperlink to that source is created, that means a backlink for Wikipedia. org has been generated. The more backlinks a website has, the more convinced Google will be that that website’s content is of high quality.

Over the course of time, however, backlinking has become a wide frontier for SEO cheaters. Up to this day, softwares like SENuke that generate thousands of backlinks for websites on auto-pilot are still thriving. (They evolve as often as search engines do.) Because of persisting “blackhat” SEO practices, Google sometimes drop websites from its search rankings altogether. Bots are busy everywhere, creating impressions of active user engagement for a particular website content. At Fiverr.com, for example, you can buy 25 thousand Facebook likes for $5.

Unique content also helps rank websites in search engine results. This explains why large and the so- called authority websites with a steady supply of fresh, unique content, like Wikipedia and news sites that have maintained their online presence for a long time, rank high especially for high- traffic keywords.

For webmasters, SEO used to be a simple and straightforward process. The basic inputs include getting your website (that is, your domain name) listed by search engines. Do-follow tags and site to crawl your content. Domain names are also important; seo.com may not outrank Wikipedia for the search keyword “seo”. But whatisseo. com may outrank Wikipedia if the search keyword is changed to “what is seo.” Whatisseo.com may also outrank whatisseo.ph or tips.seo.com for the same keywords. All other things being equal, a domain name that has been registered a decade ago will often outrank a website whose domain name was registered only lately.

Early SEO techniques included keyword density. An 800-word article about rockstar Duterte will dominate search engine results for the search keywords “rockstar Duterte” if its title or subtitle and at least 30 percent of the article content is populated by those keywords. Google eventually became ambiguous about using this criterion, as bots churned out content that, while pleasing to crawlers, were rubbish to humans. Organizing content in a silo also helps crawlers to analyze the relevance of your content to search engine users. Blog farms can overcook the silo, and Google, in its dictatorial reign, can unilaterally trash them like they are yesterday’s leftovers.

Experts recommend that the quickest way to weight loss or anti-aging products; or followers for an idea, say charter change, or for mobilizing a partisan community, say during an election) is to advertise with either Google or Facebook. Another option, which costs almost nothing unless you are hiring webmasters and SEO consultants, is to create online content that ranks high in search engine results for the keywords with which you are selling a product or an idea.

Top 7 Link Building Strategies that are Penguin Approved and Require NO Outreach

Top 7 Link Building Strategies that are Penguin Approved and Require NO Outreach

1. Reclaim links that you already “own”:
• Use GWT to discover broken links
• Go to GWT, click on your website, then "Site health" then "Crawl Errors" in the left nav. A list of URLs and response codes will appear at the bottom of the page
• "Repair" the broken links by using a 301 redirect
2. Automatic Attribution:

• Use a copy detection and attribution service like www.tynt.com or a script such as the ones created by Adam Dimech
• According to Tynt, this automatic attribution link can drive up to 40 percent more visits to a page. Plus you get a relevant, non-anchor link.

• 
  
1. Get image links:
• If your website is designed in CSS, submit it to CSS directories like CSS Mania, Best Web Gallery, or CSS Elite.
2. Niche Directories – it’s all about the quality and relevance:
• Quality – Make certain the directory is indexed. Most quality directories are paid directories – the cost of entry is a barrier to spammers.
• Relevance – must have a suitable category for your listing
3. Donate to Charities and Nonprofits:
• Run a search for “donators page” and “donations page” and you will be presented with a virtual menu of options for organizations to donate to.
• Typical cost $100 - $200
4. Join Local Business Groups:
• Links from the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and the Chamber of Commerce are great for both link building and Trust Building.
• Consider your membership fee as a cost of doing business. Not only do you benefit from some powerful links, but you're building trust and adding a new source of local traffic
5. Use your Twitter profile for Link Building:
• Kristi Hines has identified 15 sites that will either automatically link back to you using information in your Twitter profile or will allow you to sign in with Twitter and add links. Here are the details.

Incorporate Anchor Text Diversity

A natural backlink portfolio contains an assortment of link types, pointing to your website. Focus your link strategy around these common link types:

• Brand links: Variations include: Your Domain, YourDomain.com, www.YourDomain.com, YourDomain.
• Exact-match anchor text keyword links: These anchor text links should point to the most appropriate page on the website (the one you are optimizing).
• Partial-match keyword links: It’s important not to over-optimize with exact match keywords, otherwise you could trip a phrase based filter.
• Generic Links: Like “Read More” or “Click Here.” Keep in mind that good content should fill this need with little if any work required on your part.
• Page title links: Some of your links should be the same as your page title.

Determine which links need to be reviewed and considered for removal/disavowal from webmaster including:

• Links from a domain not indexed in Google
• Links from a website containing a malware or virus warning
• Links on the same page as spammy, unrelated links
• Links on a page with Google PageRank that is gray bar or zero
• Links coming from link networks
• Sitewide links – especially blogroll and footer links
• Paid links

Google’s Penguin Update also looks at the following:

• “Exact Match” Anchor Text - If Google notices that a large number of links pointing back to a specific page are the exact same keyword term, this is a big red flag that you are doing something unnatural. Google expects most of your anchor text to include your brand or domain, so if a number of links pointing back to your site include a competitive non-branded keyword term, they’ll assume there’s something fishy going on.
• Backlink Relevance - There’s that buzzword again… relevance. Just as important as the relevance of your own content within your site is the relevance of the sites linking back to you. For example, if you sell t-shirts, it wouldn’t make sense to have a large number of links from websites that sell fruit. The relevance of the sites linking to you as an authority on a specific topic should be loosely tied to what you actually do. Sites that have links from many irrelevant sites is also a red flag for Google that something isn’t quite right.

Here are six important reasons why:

1. Link building is still the best way to improve search visibility
2. Links aren’t going away anytime soon, and might in fact be the litmus test for future signals
3. Building links can increase brand exposure
4. Link building naturally goes hand in hand with other online marketing activities
5. Link building can help create and propel new relationships
6. Links send positive signals to Google, and can help improve a bad backlink profile.

How Google Search Engine Works?

Google Search Engine works according to the background algorithm provided. The most helpful element behind Google Search is its crawler. The Google Crawler crawl the content of about 60 trillion websites present on web. Google Crawler make a successful search by crawling and indexing about 60 trillion website in just fraction of second (1/8 th part of second). Google Search Engine is the fastest known search engine ever. Google Search Engine also remove the spams from the search queries and produce the real and fresh content in the search queries. So let’s start about knowing about the process behind How Google Search Engine Works?

Google Panda 2014

Google keeps the track of all websites by crawling i.e. Google follows the links from page to page. This is upon the user that whether he/she wants their sites to get crawled by the Google Crawler. Google sort out the content of various sites by their content.

1.  The process starts with the writing a content in either form like writing a blog, tweeting, updating a website or adding the content on web by any way.
2. After this step of writing the content, Google Crawler starts working. Google Crawler crawls about 60 trillions of sites and come across your unique blog.
3. Google Bot always follows link. In case you have links to you site, it will get crawled deeply and regularly.
4. If you set robots.txt not to crawl your site, than your site will not get crawled. Also if any link to you site have any no follow tag than Google Bot will not come to your site by that link.
5. Google crawler can also find your content, blog or a website with the help of XML Sitemaps. The more back links you are having from high ranking websites or pages the more higher authority your content or blog is having, till it is not tagged “no follows”.
6. After being crawled by Google, the content goes for Google Indexing. All the page content are stored in a reverse index, all page titles and links are stored in one index and are used for competitive and broad searches. While the content on page are stored in another index and are used for long tail searches. During search Google presents the caches which keeps on updating regularly.
7. Based on the links and back links present, Google estimate the page and domain overall authority by the owner.
   
8. Then Google takes a part of second in checking the pages that whether they are obeying the Google policies or not. Google take down the spammed sites and the site on which there is present any sort of pirated and copied content. Google gets the DMCA notifications and Google search Quality Team keeps on refining the algorithm.
9. When we type the text for search, Google locates the keywords and synonyms to gather the similar words for including in search query.
10. Search query consists of millions of results related to the search words but only thousands of them appear. Google give more preference to the local websites.
11. Google also starts finding the relevant ads based on the keywords you typed in search box. Ads with high cpc and high click through rate are shown above the search result.
12. The pages with duplicate content are removed from the search queries.
13. Many Google Filters are also applied to the search result. In Universal search filter Google displays the mix result of news, video, book, song etc. results. Local inter connectivity leads to the high ranking if the content is linked to high ranking sites. If the search keyword have a lot of popularity and is in a boost search then Google give the priority to the fresh new results. Google can cluster multiple pages from same domain if the domain is having the high page rank.
14. After processing from the filter, the organic results for the search results are displayed. Also the ads related to search keywords are displayed above the links.

This complex process take place in 1/8 th of the second and about for 100 billion times a day. Google produces about 20 billion dollars every year.

This was all with How Google Search Engine works? If you have any other information about Algorithm, Google Search Engine and Google Search Engine Crawler, then you can share with us in the comment box below.

1. The process starts with the writing a content in either form like writing a blog, tweeting, updating a website or adding the content on web by any way.
2. After this step of writing the content, Google Crawler starts working. Google Crawler crawls about 60 trillions of sites and come across your unique blog.
3. Google Bot always follows link. In case you have links to you site, it will get crawled deeply and regularly.
4. If you set robots.txt not to crawl your site, than your site will not get crawled. Also if any link to you site have any no follow tag than Google Bot will not come to your site by that link.
5. Google crawler can also find your content, blog or a website with the help of XML Sitemaps. The more back links you are having from high ranking websites or pages the more higher authority your content or blog is having, till it is not tagged “no follows”.
6. After being crawled by Google, the content goes for Google Indexing. All the page content are stored in a reverse index, all page titles and links are stored in one index and are used for competitive and broad searches. While the content on page are stored in another index and are used for long tail searches. During search Google presents the caches which keeps on updating regularly.
7. Based on the links and back links present, Google estimate the page and domain overall authority by the owner.
8. Then Google takes a part of second in checking the pages that whether they are obeying the Google policies or not. Google take down the spammed sites and the site on which there is present any sort of pirated and copied content. Google gets the DMCA notifications and Google search Quality Team keeps on refining the algorithm.
9. When we type the text for search, Google locates the keywords and synonyms to gather the similar words for including in search query.
10. Search query consists of millions of results related to the search words but only thousands of them appear. Google give more preference to the local websites.
11. Google also starts finding the relevant ads based on the keywords you typed in search box. Ads with high cpc and high click through rate are shown above the search result.
12. The pages with duplicate content are removed from the search queries.
13. Many Google Filters are also applied to the search result. In Universal search filter Google displays the mix result of news, video, book, song etc. results. Local inter connectivity leads to the high ranking if the content is linked to high ranking sites. If the search keyword have a lot of popularity and is in a boost search then Google give the priority to the fresh new results. Google can cluster multiple pages from same domain if the domain is having the high page rank.
14. After processing from the filter, the organic results for the search results are displayed. Also the ads related to search keywords are displayed above the links.

This complex process take place in 1/8 th of the second and about for 100 billion times a day. Google produces about 20 billion dollars every year.
This was all with How Google Search Engine works? If you have any other information about Algorithm, Google Search Engine and Google Search Engine Crawler, then you can share with us in the comment box below.
- See more at: http://howtosolvetrick.com/how-google-search-engine-crawler-works-google-algorithm/#sthash.wqsA8NyX.dpuf

How to Get Fast Your Website Indexed in Google Search Engine

It can be very frustrating waiting for your site to appear in the Google search engine results. Luckily for you, there are a few things that you can do to speed up the process. By following these methods, I usually have might sites indexed and appearing in search results within 48 hours.

Before taking action, you should first ensure that your website is optimized and search engine friendly. Make sure the code is clean and correct, you can run your HTML through a validation tool to check this. Also make sure that you have linked every page together so the search engines can easily crawl through every page on your website. Its also advisable to ensure that you have spell checked and proof read your content, and everything is polished and complete, particularly taking care to make sure all the links are working and none are broken. Once you have done this, you are ready to take action.

The first thing you should do after uploading your website is to social bookmark your URL with a few of the top social bookmarking sites. I usually use five different sites. Because these social bookmarking sites are so large, and are constantly updated with new content, the search engines bots crawl them regularly. It will only take a matter of minutes before your link is found, and the bots crawl your website too.

After I have social bookmarked my URL, I will make a few posts to well known popular forums, with my link in the signature. Just one post on two or three different forums is enough. Make sure that they are well established, frequently updated forums, so you can be sure that the search engine crawlers visit the site regularly. Again, it should take less than an hour for your link to be found and for the search engine crawlers to visit your page.

The next stage is to submit an article to a well known article directory, search engines are regularly crawling through the new pages. Your article with a link back to your new site will be found very quickly, and again your site will be crawled also.

The final part of my strategy is to post a few comments on some popular blogs. Ideally you are looking for blogs that have been established for a few years, are updated daily with new content, and have a high number of visitors. Leaving your link in with a blog comment will again send the search engine crawlers your way.

By combining these methods, you are creating a powerful system to ensure that your web pages are crawled thoroughly, and that your site is indexed fast. The sooner your site is indexed, the sooner you will start receiving free organic search engine traffic.

SEO and Google Tips for Writing Meta Keywords Tag:

The Meta keywords tag is placed within <HEAD></HEAD> tags just before the <BODY> tag of the HTML in the Webpage. Major search engines including Yahoo, Google recommend the use of the Meta keywords tag. Meta keywords tag consist the list f important keywords that the search engine spiders or crawlers or bots can read and relate to the webpage. Pick up the most important keywords for inclusion in the Meta keywords tag. Separate the keywords in the Meta keywords tag with commas. Make sure that the keywords used in the Meta keywords tag are the same keywords used within the webpage. Never use any trademarks as keywords in the Meta keywords tag, trademarks are protected by law and should not be used without permission even within the Meta tags which are invisible to the visitors.

How to Write Meta Keywords Tag:

• Meta keywords are two types, primary keywords and secondary keywords.


• Primary Keywords means related to header of the content and secondary keywords means related keywords to the primary keyword


• Primary keyword fallows the secondary keywords. Example given below: Meta keywords tag, Meta keywords, seo Meta keywords tag, Google Meta keywords tag and etc.


• When you are writing the keywords in the Meta tags it should contain maximum of 30 keywords or 180 characters.


• Use the Keywords to increases the traffic of your web site. Identify and use those keywords in the content which is typed by the users in the search engines search bar.


• Understand your users concerns by analyzing the keywords that they are using.


• Using Keywords tools like Inventory overture and Google Adwords and Google suggest useful to know the keywords density like Inventory overture provides information on how many times the keyword is used by the users in a month.


• Google Adwords provides information on C.P.C (Cost per Click) and related keywords.


• Google Suggest provides information on visitors uses keywords and the competitors list for those particular keywords.

SEO and Google Tips for Writing Meta Keywords Tag:

• Each keyword should not be repeat more then 3 times in the Meta keywords tag.


• If you want to rank for a particular keyword like keywords, for this keyword there are more competitors in the web site so over come this competitors you have to use the 2 or 3 words keywords in the Meta Tags. Like Meta keywords tag.


• If you want to rank for a particular keyword like keywords, for this keyword there are more competitors in the web site so over come this competitors you have to use the 2 or 3 words keywords in the Meta Tags. Like Meta keywords tag.

How to Make the Best Title Tag Possible

1. Brand your traffic
   
   Use the title of your site or brand at the beginning or end of every title tag to help searchers know where they're going and to increase return visits. If you're struggling to find justification for this component, think of all the ad studies showing that consumers are willing to pay more for a "brand name" product than an off-brand or store brand item of the same type - apply this logic to the SERPs and you'll find that users will go further down the rankings to click on a "trusted" brand.
   
   


2. Limit length to 65 characters (including spaces) or less
   
   There's no reason to cut off the last word and have it replaced with a "..." Note that the engines have fluctuated recently and Google, in particular, is now supporting up to 70 characters in some cases.
   
   


3. Incorporate keyword phrases
   
   This one may seem obvious, but it's critical that whatever your keyword research shows as being the most valuable for capturing searches gets prominently included in your title tag. It doesn't have to be the first words, but it should be the semantic and logical center of attention.
   
   


4. Target longer phrases if they're relevant
   
   When choosing what keywords to include in a title tag, I often like to use as many as are completely relevant to the page at hand, while remaining accurate and descriptive. Thus, it can be much more valuable to have a title tag like "Blogspot | Google Seo Rules with Algorithm" rather than simply "Blogspot | Google Seo Rules" - including those additional terms that are both relevant to the page and receive significant search traffic can bolster your page's value. However, if you have a separate landing page for "Skiing accessories" than for "equipment," then you shouldn't include one term in the other's title - you'll be cannibalizing your rankings by forcing the engines to choose which page on your site is more relevant.
   
   


5. Use a divider
   
   When splitting up the brand from the descriptive, I like to use the "|" symbol (aka the pipe bar). Others choose the arrow ">" or hyphen "-" and both work well. At times, however, I've found it useful to use the arrow or hyphen inside a title tag, as with a title like "blogspot | Articles > Keyword Research - A Beginner's Guide" hence my love of the pipe bar.

when you create html choose right keywords

Choosing the right keywords to base your site optimization around is an important first step. General or generic keywords are usually not the best approach, and sometimes it's better to be a little more specific and focus on niche keywords relating to your product or service.

For example, let's talk about www.devedit.com -- DevEdit is our WYSIWYG HTML editing component that drops into browser-based applications.

The problem is, there are a LOT of WYSIWYG HTML editors, but how can we get DevEdit to appear in Google's top 10 rankings? Well, let's see. Trying to optimize for the keyword "HTML" alone would be a tough task, as it's too general. There are HTML editors, HTML tutorials, HTML articles, etc.

We need to be more specific, which means:

1. Targeting a more suitable market that is looking for a content editing solution


2. Competing with fewer websites targeting the same keywords


3. Optimizing for keywords that people actually use when performing searches

Targeting a suitable market will depend on your website, as well as the products and services you offer. Try to be specific with your keywords, and remember that people no longer use single keyword search phrases - the average search phrase contains 3-5 related words.

For example, if you're optimizing for a web development site and you're located in Sydney, Australia, use keywords such as "web development Sydney" or "web development services Australia".

To find out how many websites are competing with your keywords -- either intentionally or not -- simply do a search on Google and note down how many results are returned. In our case, for "online html editor", we're competing with 9,080,000 sites. The more sites that are competing for your keywords, the harder it will be to get on the front page.

Alternatively, to get a rough indication of how many people are actually searching for the keywords you want to optimize your site for, use the Overture search suggestion tool. It's not exact, and doesn't measure Google searches, but it does give a very good estimate.

The Overture search suggestion tool will also provide you with a list of similar keywords, based on the keywords you enter. This can be a great way to find other keywords to optimize your site for.

As a rough guideline, try to optimize every page on your site for a different search phrase. Each search phrase should contain 2 to 3 highly targeted keywords.

Three Most Important Tricks for Google SEO

There are many ways to help get your site higher in the search engine results, but perhaps 3 of the most overlooked are 3 of the easiest.

1. The Alt Attribute

There's really nothing special about the Alt attribute other than it gives you a great opportunity to place another reference to those targeted keywords on your page.

The Alt attribute does not function on it's own; it is contained within the HTML <IMG> tag. The idea behind the Alt attribute is that when the image does not display, the information in the Alt attribute will be displayed in it's place. With most web browsers, the Alt text (as the actual text within the Alt attribute is called) is displayed when the image is hovered over with the mouse. Visually impaired web surfers will also be served the Alt text in their readers.

Acceptable Usage of the Alt Attribute for SEO

The Alt attribute can help your website to gain rank in the search engines, but it can also hurt your site if you abuse it. The following examples are some unacceptable Alt text implementations:

<img src="searching.jpg" alt="SEO, web programming, search engine optimization, address bar, surfing the web">

<img src="code.jpg" alt="programming, web programming, HTML, CSS, Java, websites">

Besides risking a penalty for keyword stuffing, using alt text like the examples above just plain look bad and can detract from your online reputation.The following does not work if you are using FireFox as FireFox does not show Alt text or images that fail to load.Hover over the picture below to see how bad this looks to site visitors.Hover over the image and if you are not using FireFox you would see the alt text laundry list of keywords.

It looks even worse when the picture fails to load.

You should see either the alt text alone, or the symbol for a broken picture along with the alt text.

Anchor Text Rule Based on Word Count

A quality guideline now becomes a rule.

Every month we raise the quality bar a little. This month is no different. Effective immediately, we’ve tightened our standards on how many words are accepted in anchor text links – and for good reason.

An “Anchor Text Link” is a clickable word or phrase that links to another web page.

Sadly, some authors abuse this ability by linking-up extremely long key phrases – or worse yet, entire sentences. Before you know it, a quality article looks like SPAM because it’s filled with giant text links. Suddenly the emphasis of the article is shifted from providing useful information to merely serving as a vehicle for link space in a spammy resource box.

Our Editorial Guidelines suggest limiting anchor text links to only 3 words but …

Expert Authors can now earn the ability to link-up 4-word and 5-word phrases* by submitting lengthier (over 400 words) high-quality articles.

BOTTOM LINE:

• If your article is shorter than 400 words, each text link may only contain a maximum of 3 words*


• If your article is longer than 400 words, each text link may only contain a maximum of 5 words*

* Important Note: Any common words, including to, is, in, on, it, and, at, by, a, an and others will now be excluded from the word count.

Make sense?

Member feedback is what lead us to study, and then allow, the “common words” to *not* count towards the total words allowed in an anchor text link.

Character Encoding and Language

This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document.The document provides practical best practices related to specifying the language of content that HTML content authors can use to ensure that their HTML is easily adaptable for an international audience. These are best practices that are best addressed from the start of content development if unnecessary costs and resource issues are to be avoided later on.

The very first line of every page on your site should be the DOCTYPE! Declaration which tells browsers and other user agents what kind of HTML it will find on the page.

There are lots of different kinds of HTML (e.g. HTML 4.01 Strict, HTML 4.01 Transitional, XHTML 1.0 Strict etc.) and if there is no Document Type Definition (DTD) then browsers will switch out of ‘Standards Compliant’ mode into ‘Quirks Mode’ with unpredictable results.

Google has recently made some pretty significant changes in its ranking algorithm.

Google has recently made some pretty significant changes in its ranking algorithm. The latest update, dubbed by Google forum users as "Allegra", has left some web sites in the dust and catapulted others to top positions. Major updates like this can happen a few times a year at Google, which is why picking the right search engine optimization company can be the difference between online success and failure. However, it becomes an increasingly difficult decision when SEO firms themselves are suffering from the Allegra update.

What is Semantic Code/HTML you ask?

Basically, it’s a way of writing your HTML in a more meaningful, structured and to be honest, sensible way. It’s all about using your header tags (H1, H2, etc) for yep, you guessed it – headers, instead of bolding the text and increasing the font size with the old <font size=”10000000000000000000″> tag. For paragraphs, use the <p> tag rather than sizing the font and adding hundreds of line breaks, for lists use the <li> tag, and so on. If you want to add an image, you use the <img=…> tag because it’s the tag for inserting images, so it stands to reason really that when you’re adding a heading, list, etc, you use the correct tag, not some sort of bodge. Got it? Great.

In the Design and content guidelines sub-section of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines there is a paragraph that reads “…. write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content”. The only way I know of achieving this objective easily is to use semantic markup.
Semantic markup means using html elements that are appropriate to ‘content meaning’ rather than ‘content presentation’. A simple example might be using <em> for emphasis in some cases rather than <i> for italic because <i> only tells the browser what to do and does not explain what the content represents.

Apart from helping Google there are other advantages in separating content from presentation and using semantic markup. For example much easier code maintenance and correct interpretation by other user agents like audio screen reader software.

So why use Semantic HTML? What are the benefits? Why can’t I just do things my way?

Well you can just do things your way if you want, but I’d probably not advise it. The biggest benefit of using Semantic Code is that you’ll be adhering to the Internet standard. And the benefit of that is that when things change and progress as they like to do on the Internet, the stuff that makes your site work isn’t going to get left behind.

Another great benefit is that it’ll make your pages load quicker. You whack all the crap and formatting in an external stylesheet, and it only needs to be declared and loaded once. For example:

1. Crappy HTML – <font size=”3″ color=”#000000″><i>HELLO!</i></font><br><br>


2. Over the top XHTML – <div class=”big_heading”>Hello!</div>


3. Semantic HTML – <h1>Hello!</h1>