XHTML / CSS

What exactly is XHTML/CSS and what does it have to do with search engine optimization? XHTML stands for Extensible HyperText Markup Language. You may have heard of HTML, which is the language that you use to create websites. XHTML is a brother to HTML, and gives the website creator much more flexibility in what they can do to the website. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and is the language that is used to define certain characteristics of a website, including colors, layouts or fonts.

Learning the XHTML/CSS language can be tricky. It truly is a lot like learning another language, and just as some people take to second languages well and others don’t, some people are able to pick up HTML and CSS well, while others are not. If you are interested in learning how to write code to build your own website, there are tons of different e-books and websites that are devoted to teaching eager beginners the ropes, from the bottom up. If, however, you are not interested or are nervous about designing your own site, you may want to take advantage of people whose main function is designing and maintaining websites.

XHTML/CSS can be used very effectively in order to help put your website on the top of almost any search engine. A site that has a lot of good SEO content can do wonders in bringing in traffic, but some of the biggest tricks with SEO sites are not what is on the page that the consumer sees, but what is behind the page. The first thing to look for is the readability and look of your code. If you have a lot of clunky code the is cluttered all over the place, a search engine will have a difficult time reading the code and will bypass the site, finding it “irrelevant” to the specific keyword.

Instead of having clunky and chaotic code, you want to make sure that your code is visually appealing and is easy for you to read. Chances are, if it’s easy for you to read, it will be easy for a search engine crawler to read. This has the bonus of making it much easier for you to figure out the problem when something is wrong in your code, which can be as annoying as finding a needle in a haystack.

You can also use XHTML/CSS in order to create some great effects that will not only impress your visitors, but will also help to bring you up on search engine positioning. One of these such effects is the Javascript rollover. This is when you roll your pointer over an object and it does or becomes something different. You can use CSS in order to create this effect, which will not only help you to make the file size smaller, but will also give textual content that is readable by search engine spiders. This gives you a slight advantage when it comes to search engine positioning, especially if the text inside the link is a keyword!