Failing to Indicate the Content Hierarchy using Header Elements
This can be a bit confusing. I know I sound picky now, but those elements should really not be called “header” elements, but rather “headings.” Headers are what the web server or browsers send out before any content, like preferred languages etc.
Do you mean it will only display 8 words in SERPs or it will only pay attention to the first 8 words when using title in ranking algo?
“just a hint about the spell checking… firefox has a built in spell-checker. In my opinion - it’s by far the most necessary tool for web design.”
Only if the person who’s writing the copy is bad at spelling. And if that person is bad at spelling they’re normally bad at writing in general and therefore should not be given the task of writing for the web - they’re simply not up to such an important task.
I understand the importance of having a spellchecker if you’re a developer who’s retyping copy into the code. Developers are not hired for their spelling!
Spell checker? So will that be UK English, US English, Australian English, South African English or just plain International English?
As I’m sure you know there is a very big difference.
My comment above was referring to a comment that is no longer being displayed so it doesn’t quite fit into the context of this article now.
To answer your question AJKock, the spellchecker would naturally be in the localised language for your website. So if you’re a UK website, it would be UK English, a South African site would use South African English, an international site, International English etc. I don’t know why you feel you have to ask the question though, the language choice for a website should be common sense, right? It should match the language of your main target audience.
In your Esfahan rug example, the right thing to do in that situation (accessibility wise) is for the the <img> to have null alt text (alt=“”) - the image is already described by its caption, so alt text in this case would be tautological.
And yes - as someone else said - alt text should not describe the image, it should serve to replace it.
Your advice on alt is slightly misleading.
If the logo/banner simply repeats text nearby on the page, it should have alt=“”. It should only have content in the alt text if the logo/banner is there instead of text on the page.
Oops, fired off too soon last time. Loads more mistakes in your tips for alt text…
The ‘rug’ example has not got it ‘almost right’, it has failed dismally. Alt is a required attribute for any <img>, so the example that you gave has two instances of invalid code - four if you count the unencoded “s in the text. The bullet should have alt=”" because it is purely decorative. The picture of the rug should probably have alt=“picture of rug” or a similar descriptive phrase, because it is used as a link, so users (and search engines!) need to know what it represents.
But the example is rubbish, even apart from the invalid HTML. It uses presentational HTML. It uses x instead of ×. It isn’t hard to write an example that follows good practice, so why copy an example that is so riddled with major and minor mistakes?
As a general rule, you should not use the word “logo” in alt text. Nobody needs to know that it’s a logo - it’s just five characters of fluff that detract from the rest of the page. It benefits neither users nor search engines to have alt=“MyPage logo” rather than alt=“MyPage”. The main exception is when the function of the <img> is to display logos, rather than to display branding.
You’ve glossed right over the reason why spelling and grammar are important for SEO. If your website is selling Samsnug electronics, because you didn’t spellcheck carefully, everyone who correctly types Samsung into the search engine is never going to find your site. Google is good at correcting misspelled search terms, but not so good at finding misspelled text.
Re #2 - none of this is difficult, time-consuming or expensive. It is BASIC. If you find it too difficult to give a page a useful <title>, or to give images appropriate alt text, or to not wantonly fill your page with Javascript - then you shouldn’t be writing web pages. Seriously.
The difference is between wanting to do a good job and not giving a wet slap. If you don’t care about the quality of your work, why bother doing it at all? It won’t be worth anything, and it reflects badly on your capabilities if you can do better.
Re #7: The advantage to not using tables is usually that you get a higher content-to-fluff ratio. Search engines like pages that have more content and less code.
It also means that you can front-load the page with the content, and have the navigation at the end of the source code (regardless of how it is laid out on screen), whereas if you want the nav on the left or at the top then with tables, you have to put it at the start of the source code.
Search engines rank content near the top of the page (ie source code) higher than content near the bottom (and most SEs don’t even index content below a certain point), so having the text at the top will improve your ratings.
Re #22: There’s a difference between being bad at spelling and having clumsy fingers. My spelling is excellent but I make mistakes because my fingers hit the wrong keys. That doesn’t mean that what I have to say isn’t worth reading … but if I don’t bother to correct the mistakes, that is when you can look down on me.
Just on that logo point Stevie, realistically, you shouldn’t be using <img> to display a site’s logo at all. Make it an H1 of the company name, hide the text with CSS and replace this with a background image of the logo.
h1 takes significant precidence over alt, so displaying the company name as such will significantly boost company’s visibility in SERPs.
Excuse my spelling - long day ;).
Hi.
About teh speling. Waht if your targetting a commonally misppeled serach terme sutch as “Britney Spears”?
yours, Marcus
Very useful, thank you.
The answer is simple if your site is just targeted at a local or spesific country, but what if you are into travel and your site are targeting the US, UK and Europe? Different English speaking cultures even use the same word for different meanings. I was only mentioning it for interest sake, spell checking can only be done up to a point.
Great Article, very informative and helpful, will try out a few of these improvements today.
Great stuff guys. Thanks!
Great stuff guys. It’s always nice to read through a good refresher and take note of the basics again. thanks.
Thanks for this reminder - I think I was aware of all these points, but we do occasionally forget even the basics.
Thanks for taking the time to publish this article.
A real eye-opener 
Thanks for the wonderful article! This has given me wonderful tips, I especially appreciate the hierarchy section. Good work.
Thanks for that article.