Cantags within links affect Google's perception of them?
-
Hi, All!
This might be really obvious, but I have little coding experience, so when in doubt - ask...
One of our client site's has navigation that looks (in part) like this:
<a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="http://www.mysite.com/section1"></a>
<a <span="">src="images/arrow6.gif" width="13" height="7" alt="Section 1">Section 1</a><a <span=""></a>
WC3 told us the
tags invalidate, and while I ignored most of their comments because I didn't think it would impact on what search engines saw, because thesetags are right in the links, it raised a question.
Anyone know if this is for sure a problem/not a problem?
Thanks in advance!
Aviva B
-
Thanks, Ryan. Good ideas, and we'll see what "the authorities" choose to do.
-
If they would have to pay a significant amount of money to have it redone, though, would it be worth it in this kind of case? What would the odds be?
Without having any information about the site, it's not possible to offer any credible details, odds or measurements of worth. If you are asking for a guess, I would say it is very unlikely for the div tags to cause any SEO problems, but that's the problem with invalid code, you don't know how it will be handled.
The bigger concern I have is if that line of code was coded so poorly, there are likely other coding issues with the site.
May I suggest asking a couple developers for an estimate on how much it would adjust the site's code so it validates?
-
Thanks, Ryan. Point well taken. I think I may copy and paste this for the client in question. If they would have to pay a significant amount of money to have it redone, though, would it be worth it in this kind of case? What would the odds be?
Aviva
-
Thanks, Kyle. We're not the design/webmaster team, so while it might not have been a good idea to do that in the first place, our job here is just to tell our client what MUST change for SEO and what doesn't need to change, even though it might not have been ideal. The challenges of not having unlimited budget...
Thanks,
Aviva
-
Simply from a front-end development perspective, why would you place a
inside of an <a>? If you are trying to force a block element style, why not simply apply it through the CSS sheet to the</a> <a>tag?
If you supply a URL i can give more specific coding advice
Thanks - Kyle</a>
-
The problem with using invalid code is every browser may handle it differently. Even if your current browser handles it fine today, the next time it updates the results may change.
Code validation is representatives from all the major browsers getting together and agreeing on coding rules. The biggest problem with invalid code is people thinking their site is fine but then later finding out (or worse not finding out) their site does not appear correctly in various browsers.
You have ie6, ie7, ie8, ie9, ie10, Chrome, FF, Opera, Safari and other browsers on the market. You have a variety of phones, ipads and other devices. It is more important then ever to use valid code. If your page doesn't fully validate, it should still be almost valid and the couple errors which remain have been thoroughly researched and you consciously choose to not validate on those particular items. An example would be if you are using HTML 5 and the validation tool has not fully been updated for all the latest changes.
With the above noted, I am not aware of any problem with your code. The challenge is since it is not valid, you cannot predict how it will be handled by Google. Even if it is handled correctly today, a change can be made at any time which can impact you.
-
Thanks, Andy. You've seen sites that have used the tags the same way?
-
To be honest, I can't see, from an SEO perspective, how Google would view these in a negative way. I can only tell you that from all of the sites that I have seen, I have never seen this as a problem.
Someone else might come up with a definitive answer, but I would say that there is nothing wrong with
tags for SEO.
Cheers,
Andy
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Site Migration between CMS's
Hi There, I have a technical question about migrating CMS's but not servers. My client has site A on Joomla install, He want's ot migrate to Wordpress and we will call this site B. As he has a lot of old content on site A he doesn't want to lose, he has put site B (wordpress install) on a subdirectory site.com/siteb (for example). and will use a htaccess to forward the root domain to this wordpress site. Therefore anyone going to www.site.com will see the new wordpress site and the old content and joomla install will sit on the root of the server. Will Google have an issue with this? Will it even find the old content? what are the issues for the new site and new content? Look forward getting your guys input
Technical SEO | | nezona1 -
Should I change by URL's
I started with a static website and then moved to Wordpress. At the time I had a few hundred pages and wanted to keep the same URL structure so I use a plugin that adds .html to every page. Should I change the structure to a more common URL structure and do 301 directs from the .html page to the regular page?
Technical SEO | | JillB20130 -
How to optimize for different google seach center (google.de, google.ch) ?
We all use Deutsch language and (.com) domains for the sites. I ranked well in google.com ,but not so well in google.de , google.ch , my competitors ranked much better in google.de,google.ch. I checked most of their outbound-links, but get few information. Links from (.DE) domains or links from sites located in German help the rank for special google seach center ? (google.de, google.ch) . Or some other factors i missed? please help.
Technical SEO | | sunvary0 -
Does Site Structure Affect Google
Hi - I'm pretty new at this. We’re running an e-commerce affiliate site at http://www.mydomain.com. So we don’t take payments but customer gets passed through to third party sites when they select to buy a product. We have a blog at http://www.mydomain.com/news. I think Google is treating these 2 sites as as separate sites for PR. For this reason we're thinking about moving this to http://news.mydomain.com. Anyone have any experience in this?
Technical SEO | | richardjoseph0 -
Has Google stopped rendering author snippets on SERP pages if the author's G+ page is not actively updated?
Working with a site that has multiple authors and author microformat enabled. The image is rendering for some authors on SERP page and not for others. Difference seems to be having an updated G+ page and not having a constantly updating G+ page. any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | irvingw0 -
Google couldn't access your site because of a DNS error
Hello, We've being doing SEO work for a company for about 8 months and it's been working really well, we've lots of top threes and first pages. Or rather we did. Unfortunately the web host who the client uses (who to recommended them not to) has had severe DNS problems. For the last three weeks Google has been unable to access and index the website. I was hoping this was going to be a quickly resolved and everything return to normal. However this week their listing have totally dropped, 25 page one rankings has become none, Google Webmaster tools says 'Google couldn't access your site because of a DNS error'. Even searching for their own domain no longer works! Does anyone know how this will effect the site in the long term? Once the hosts sort it out will the rankings bounce back. Is there any sort of strategy for handling this problem? Ideally we'd move host but I'm not sure that is possible so any other options, or advice on how it will affect long term rankings so I can report to my client would be appreciated. Many thanks Ric
Technical SEO | | BWIRic0 -
What's best hosting option for web design company targeting UK market?
Hi, What would be the best hosting company to go with if I want to promote my site in the UK? Right now it's hostgator and I know I'll have to change it. Should I get something located in the UK (logic would suggest it) and rather dedicated server (very expensive, especially if you're using wordpress) or shared hosting will do? Thanks in advance, JJ
Technical SEO | | jjtech0 -
Google Shows 24K Links b/w 2 sites that are not linked
Good Morning, Does anyone have any idea why Google WMT shows me that i have 24,101 backlinks from one of my sites ( http://goo.gl/Jb4ng ) pointing to my other site ( http://goo.gl/JgK1e ) ... These sites have zero links between them, as far as I can see/tell. Can someone please help me figure out why Google is showing 24k backlinks? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Prime850