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Search Engine Friendly SEO XHTML Page
When creating an XHTML page for your website there are some basic tips you can follow to make sure it is search engine friendly and SEO ready.
Declare the Document Type
Right at the very top of the page you should declare what Document Type you are using, the two most popular are Transitional and Strict. We would recommend using the Strict 1.0 Document Type. The code would be as follows:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd”>
Give your page an XMLNS Attribute and set the proper Page Language Code
The code to use here should follow on the next line down directly under where you defined the Document Page Type, this code tells the browser which language you are using:
<html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” xml:lang=”en” lang=”en”>
Declare a Character Set used in the Page
Indside the <head> tags your first line of code should define the Character Set used in page, the correct code to do this is:
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″ />
Define your Page Title
This is one of the most important parts of Search Engine Optimisation, the Page Title should be placed inside the <head> tags directly below where you placed the Character Set used in page.
Your Page Title should be placed inside <title> </title> tags and include no more than 70 characters. The Page Title should include core keywords to use when people are searching for your website. Try to avoid stop words like and, or, if, etc. We advise using 8 max main keywords in the Page Title.
Define your Page Description.
The page description should be no more than 25 words, in these words try to include all your same keywords used in the Page Title in the same order. Again try to avoid words with no use or meaning to search phrases. The correct code to use for this is:
<meta name=”description” content=”detailed description of page” />
Define your Page Keywords
The next line down after Page Description include your page keywords, the correct code to use is:
<meta name=”keywords” content=”keyword1, keyword2, keyword3″ />
Include no more than 8 main keywords and avoid stop words like and, or, if etc.
Include External CSS and JavaScript Files
At the bottom of your <head> section before the closing tag define your page external CSS file and and JavaScrip files. The code to do this is:
<script src=”includes/quote_validator.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”includes/style.css” media=”screen” />
Define your Page Body Content
After the closing </head> tag open your <body> tag and insert your main page content here. For search engine optimisation you can bold, italic, and list keywords and include image alt attributes to include keywords.
Some of the most popular tags to use for Search Engine Optimisation are:
<h1><h2><h3><h4>
<p></p>
<strong></strong>
<em></em>
<a></a>
<img alt=>
Close the body section with </body> and then remember to close the html with </html> at the very bottom of the page.
