Want Higher SEO Rankings? Give Your Website a Quick Checkup

Websites run on coding standards (html, css, etc). The code behind the website tells the browser what to display. Of course, code standards change constantly. And, new browsers and new browser versions come along all the time, some with new features enabled. Web site validation is the way to determine if your code is up to modern standards.

It's easy, you simply visit these sites:

The HTML validator here: http://validator.w3.org/
The CSS validator here: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ (although if your website is old, it won't have any css code, which is not advised for commercial websites).

Simply enter your website into the validation window, and the system will advise you of any problems. And, if you are hiring a web guy or firm (ahem, you can always call us) you can always check their code with these validation tools.

If your code does not pass validation, you can always update it. What's the effect of incorrect validation? Your website will appear wrong in different browsers. But, really the greatest advantage of having properly validated code is so that search engines LOVE your website. Search engines like to reward websites that deliver a positive experience to their users. Validation can yield better rankings and a better user experience.

To perform an accurate count of your backlinks, you'll need to visit the search engines. The best tool for this is Yahoo Site Explorer. You'll find it here: https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/, and it's shown in the picture above.

Enter your website in the top box, and you'll see a website that link to yours. For reference, 1,000 backlinks is good, 50 backlinks is not very good, and 10,000 backlinks is outstanding.

Not only that, you can also check the backlinks of your competitors!

PageRank is a numerical value that Google assigns to every *indexed* page on the web. PageRank, or PR is expressed as a number from 0 to 10, 10 being the highest. Higher PageRank generally means that your site will appear higher in the search engines--so PR is a good thing.

You increase your PR by having inbound links to your site--each inbound link is a "vote" for your page which adds incrementally to your PR value.

You can check your PR by going to www.prchecker.info, as shown in the screen above. In the screenshot, you can see that MedicalWebsiteDesignPros.com was a PR3 on 1/1/2009. You can check your own PageRank as well as that of your competition.