Be Careful When You Edit Your Website

I had a client who had been updating its website for nearly a year. They added over 100 pages of content and new web pages to enrich their website and their Google search engine results.

They called my web development company wanting to know why Google is only seeing 30 of their web pages instead of 131 pages.

Our analysis revealed that a keyboard character they were entering in their description meta tag was being interpreted as a snippet of code and blocked all these new pages from being seen in Google. As a result of this error they lost nearly a year of Google crawl time for all these new pages.

What you 'type' and what you 'see' displayed in a web browser can look fine, but when done wrong it can create major problems in your website HTML code.

It does not matter if you are using a CMS, Content Management System, or a fancy website editor because only a coding professional knows if the code and characters are technically correct so they do not cause your website any harm or difficulty over search engines.

What you don't know about SEO can hurt you

When I edit content for websites for my website maintenance clients, I quickly glance over a page for the following implements: Proper use of H1 through H4 tags, bolding, link-bolding, correct ALT tagging and well formed meta-data. And when I create a new web site page, my checklist also includes proper navigation linking and placing the new page link in the site index.

If you are editing your own website pages and do not know about any of the items above, you may be sabotaging your hard work.

Web grammar and good writing are just as important.

Did you know that Google can detect the reading level for your website? They can determine if your site is at the Child, Teenager, Adult, College, Master and Doctoral reading level.

You cannot see this detection, but loosely defined it is the sum of information found on your website compared to tens of thousands of similar websites and directories with traffic or visits factored in.

It means that Google might find you (your website) as more of an authority source for information on a particular search query because of your grammar and writing.

Rick Vidallon is President of Visionefx, a Web design company based in Virginia Beach, Va. They provide services to national companies as well as small to medium businesses throughout the United States. Rick can be reached at (757) 619-6456 or rick@visionefx.net.