Google likes standards compliance

One thing I love about the SEO world is that it’s not an exact science. Just about every man and his dog have their own idea about what Google likes and hates.

I think we’re all agreed on the fact that relevant, contextual links from related so-called ‘authority’ sites are good stuff. Generous use of your keywords through your title tag, header tags and page content are also top of the list in our SEO agendas.

Well, what then? What else can we do to be Google’s best friend? Some recent theories have been thrown about such as:

• Get contact us, terms and about us pages
• Add a quick blog to your site and other ‘bulking’ things
• Put your keywords into image ALT tags

But I’ve never heard anyone state the importance of making your sites (X)HTML compliant. I am confident that the big ‘G’ sees this as a big deal, but Nobody seems to have noticed. Just look how clear Google makes this point in their webmaster guidelines:

Check for broken links and correct HTML

Easy to overlook, but even easier to adhere to. Simply let the W3C’s free online validator take a look at your page and tell you how to fix it. Job done!

And in case you’re wondering, of course I have 🙂