HTML Forum

**Tisket Taskets** · 09-14-2007, 07:59 PM

I have been taking some online classes, and am totally confused. Do the search engines give more validity to sites with the DOCTYPE, and if so, does it need to be at the beginning of each page of code, or only the home page? I have noticed that a lot of the sites that rank in the top 5 of Google do not have one listed.

Hope this makes sense.

Thanks,
Marie

**LadynRed** · 09-14-2007, 08:16 PM

Is a DOCTYPE necessary ? I'm gonna say yes, it's necessary. If you put in a proper DOCTYPE, then the browser knows exactly how to render your code. Without a doctype, the browser does it's best and will display in Quirks Mode. Using a doctype ensures greater compatibility across browsers.

Quote:

Do the search engines give more validity to sites with the DOCTYPE

I don't believe so, no.

Quote:

does it need to be at the beginning of each page of code

Absolutely at the top of EVERY page.

**Tisket Taskets** · 09-14-2007, 08:48 PM

Thanks LadynRed,

This is the code that was used in the forum I was in. Is it the correct one I should use, and should it read the same on each page, or does each page have a different doctype?

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

I am trying really hard to get my site where it is placing better in Google, but at the same time, I sure don't want to mess up anything, especially with the holidays approaching.

I have tried valadating some of my pages, and there are masses of errors, so I guess I have lots of work to do.

Marie

**vangogh** · 09-14-2007, 10:17 PM

Marie it's good to validate your code and you should use a doctype as LadynRed mentioned. It really won't affect how your pages rank though. Maybe a little at best.

Where you can get in trouble is if the code is in such poor shape that it trips up the search engine spiders. And sometimes you'll only find those errors by running your pages through a validator.

Assuming you don't have any glaring errors the validation shouldn't have any significant with search engines. Hopefully it will one day, because I think it's good practice to validate.

**ForrestCroce** · 09-14-2007, 10:48 PM

You don't absolutely need a doctype, but it's a little like how you can live on one lung. You can do it, but...

The doctype tells different software what type of document they're looking at. There are a lot of different flavors of html. There's also xml+xslt, which browsers will display, and I'm guessing search engines will understand. Google also crawls pdfs, and a number of other documents.

Probably the worst price you'll pay not declaring a doctype is browsers, like IE, FF, or whatever else, will take a little longer to parse and render the document. But it's actually worse to bother your users than to bother Yahoo. It's hard to say how much effect it could have on the search engines, but if it looks like you want it to on the screen, not that much. Worst case if a couple browsers display the page properly is that you're using  instead of <h1> or <h2>.

You should come visit the Google and SEO forums. What you're asking really overlaps a lot between an html question and a how do search engines see things question ... but it sounds like you're more concerned about search placement than the inner workings of markup language. You need to understand a little of both, because GoogleBot eats html, and you've found some advice from two of the very best.

**Tisket Taskets** · 09-14-2007, 11:04 PM

Thanks VanGough and ForrestCroce,

I guess I really don't know what it is that I am asking? LOL....I just know that I, like everyone else, would like to rank as well as possible.

As far as how the pages displays, they display fine in IE, but with FF there are some issues, but not enough that I think it would affect how a potential customer feel as far as ordering.

I am just now trying to learn a little about the workings of websites. I have had my site up for nearly 4 years, and always just depended on FrontPage to do everything I needed, and then someone told me that it was inserting some unnecessary code.

Is this the proper DOCTYPE that I should add to the pages?

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

Thanks everyone and I will visit the other forums.

Marie

**vangogh** · 09-14-2007, 11:25 PM

Glad to help Marie. FrontPage does indeed add a lot of unnecessary code. Most of us here code by hand, but there's nothing wrong with using a WYSIWYG. It's always good to understand the code though.

I agree with Forrest that you'll probably want to check out the seo and marketing forums here. Read a little and then ask some question. A warning though about search engine optimization. There's a lot of information about it online and there's a lot of misinformation about it online as well. The worst part is it's hard to tell the difference sometimes.

Since search engines don't tell us how their algorithms work we have to do a lot of guesswork. The principals are fairly easy to understand and if you see it as a subset of the larger marketing you'll be on the right path.

And we'll do what we can to help you start that journey down the path.

**CSS4Life** · 09-15-2007, 03:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tisket Taskets

Is this the proper DOCTYPE that I should add to the pages?

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

Yep that's correct.

**dansgalaxy** · 09-15-2007, 06:01 AM

Yes, i would say its quite necassary to use DOCTYPEs for all the reasons said above... and OMG FONT TAGS eeeeww

Personally i hate WYSIWYG i find they spit out some terrible code, and often you can tell which sites are done like this because you find alor of things like
 or 

all this clutter firstly decreases load time, makes the browser have to do a bit extra work, and often makes your pages look differant in differant browsers.

Personally i say code by hand or if you dont have the knowledge i would advise making your pages in wysiwyg and then getting someone else to go through it and neaten it all up for you.

hope this helps

Dan

**Tisket Taskets** · 09-15-2007, 10:05 AM

>>>Yep that's correct.<<<<< Thanks Whym...I will be adding this to all my pages this weekend.

>>>Personally i say code by hand or if you dont have the knowledge i would advise making your pages in wysiwyg and then getting someone else to go through it and neaten it all up for you.<<<<< Thanks Dansgalaxy. I have considered doing that, but it is so hard to know who you can trust to do it correctly. I can not afford to have someone do the entire site, but would not mind paying someone to do one page at at time, if I knew that it would be done correctly.

OK, I have one more question about this, and then I will try to not bother y'all anymore. For a while at least. :_) I am going to try really hard to learn this coding stuff, but it will be after the first of the year before I will have the time.

In the tag that says:

<meta http-equiv="content-type" Content....which of these should it be?

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"

Or

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

All this tech stuff sure is confusing when you get older.

Have a great Saturday.
Marie

**CSS4Life** · 09-15-2007, 10:24 AM

I think you should go for the second one: iso-8859 - it's about the character set to be used, and I'd go for this one.

You can get your documents checked in these forums - either pay someone to do it in the freelance area, post your code in this forum, or ask for people to review your web site and it's code, in the website review and suggestions forum. I'd vote for the HTML forum if any, as there are more experts in this one.

You can check it for errors using the W3C validation tool too

**Tisket Taskets** · 09-15-2007, 10:49 AM

Thanks Whym.....I would certainly like for someone to check things out for me, but I don't want to impose on anyone. That is the reason I don't mind paying for it, just don't know where to get it done.

I have tried to validate it with the W3C tool, and for some reason, it seems to hang and will not do anything.

I have just been spending some time on the google forum for webmasters and just found that my site has not been verified by google because it does not have a "verify code". I have just added it to my home page and am going to publish, and hopefully then it will at least get verified by google.

And thanks, I will use the ISO 8859 and hopefully get all of the site unified with the doctype and that.

Y'all are all so helpful and freely give of your knowledge to all of us "dummies".

Thanks

**CSS4Life** · 09-15-2007, 11:51 AM

I think you are talking about the verification code for proving to Google you are the owner, so you can use the webmaster tools. Sign up to a Google account here, or if you already have Gmail, you can then just login there. Google will give you the verification code inside the control panel, and verification is quick and easy. Once you have done that, you can submit sitemaps and other things.

**dansgalaxy** · 09-15-2007, 01:45 PM

I would offer to do some neatening up but im doing too many scripts at the moment Lol i getting all confused :P

**Tisket Taskets** · 09-15-2007, 03:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by whym

I think you are talking about the verification code for proving to Google you are the owner, so you can use the webmaster tools. Sign up to a Google account here, or if you already have Gmail, you can then just login there. Google will give you the verification code inside the control panel, and verification is quick and easy. Once you have done that, you can submit sitemaps and other things.

Yes, Whym, that is what I was talking about. Now I know why I hate trying to work on the coding so badly!!!!!

I do have a Google account, and I signed in and got the code to insert in my home page. After I did that, the code is showing up across the top of my page when it is pulled up on the net!!!! I went back, took the code out, and it is STILL showing up across the top of the web page. I am ready to pull my hair out. I don't want it showiing up on the web page, and I know that it is not suppose to, but how do I get it off?

Marie

**CSS4Life** · 09-15-2007, 03:16 PM

OK can you give us the web address - that might help. Also - what are you using to edit it?

I suggest to verify it - you should do the other verification method - create a blank HTML file in your public_html folder, and name it as Google says to. Someone is very unlikely to see this file as there are no links to it, and it doesn't even really matter if they do.

**ForrestCroce** · 09-15-2007, 03:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tisket Taskets

As far as how the pages displays, they display fine in IE, but with FF there are some issues, but not enough that I think it would affect how a potential customer feel as far as ordering.

That's obviously the biggest concern. But if Firefox has some issues displaying your pages correctly, that's a red flag. Maybe not a severe one, but it means it's worth looking a little deeper into. Each browser has its own way of guessing what you intended when you have "bad" code - bad can mean a lot of different things - so if IE guesses right but FF doesn't, that suggests some kind of issue. VanGogh was right, earlier, when he said html validation really isn't important to Google unless the code is so bad their spider can't make sense of it. That's probably not the case if IE shows what you intend, but it would be enough for me to look into the differences.

Look into some plug ins: FireBug, Aardvark, and for IE, there's a developer toolbar that sort of mimics FireBug. These things will let you hover the mouse over a particular section of the page, and isolate the code that makes it look the way it does.

Finally, you should post the URL here. We're talking in pretty general terms about what could or couldn't be a problem, but there are some experienced people who will put the five minutes it'll take them into telling you how important any particular issue is.

**Tisket Taskets** · 03:31 PM

Y'all are all so kind to give so freely. I hope some day I will be able to "pay it forward".

The site is www.tiskettaskets.com

****Whym said****I suggest to verify it - you should do the other verification method - create a blank HTML file in your public_html folder, and name it as Google says to. Someone is very unlikely to see this file as there are no links to it, and it doesn't even really matter if they do.
__________________

I don't think I would know how to do this, so that is the reason I copied and pasted the code the verification page gave me. I actually did not copy and paste, I manually typed it in.

By the way, as far as what I am using to edit it, if you mean what program, it is Front Page, and I do the editing in the HTML view

Thanks a million,
Marie

**Tisket Taskets** · 09-15-2007, 03:43 PM

I hesitate to post this code because it is so long, so if the mods thinks it need to be removed, I totally understand.
Here is part of the code from the home page: www.tiskettaskets.com

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<title>Texas Gift Baskets,Texas Baskets Gifts,Texas Food gifts,Corporate Gift
Baskets</title>
<meta name="Keywords" content="texas gift baskets,tx gift baskets,Gift Baskets,basket gifts,gifts basket,gift baskets from tx,Dallas, Fort Worth, Abilene, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Midland, Odessa, Plano, Irving, Mesquite gift baskets from texas, western gift baskets, texas food products, western gifts, texas gifts,">
<meta http-equiv="Description" content="Gift Baskets and Gourmet Coffee Cakes that are wonderful gifts for men, women, and children.">
<meta NAME="CLASSIFICATION"
CONTENT="gift baskets, coffee cakes, basket gifts, gift basket, gifts, delivery">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">
<meta NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="ALL,INDEX,FOLLOW">
<meta name="DISTRIBUTION" content="GLOBAL">
<meta HTTP-EQUIV="expires" CONTENT="0">
<meta name="Copyright" content="Tisket Taskets">
<meta name="author" content="Marie High">
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 5.0">
<meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">
</head>
<body background="images/Background.jpg" topmargin="0" leftmargin="0" rightmargin="0" bottommargin="0">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" style="border-collapse: collapse" width="740" id="table1" height="100%">
<tr>
<td width="740" height="114"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td height="2039"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" style="border-collapse: collapse" width="700" id="table2" height="1300">
<tr>
<td width="150" height="1277"></td>
<td width="594" height="1277">
<h2 align="center"><a href="Texas%20_Regional.htm">Texas Gift Baskets </a>~ and More 
<a href="christmas.htm">Christmas Gift Baskets</a> 
<a href="InternationalQuestions.htm">International Shipping Available</a> 
<a href="UPSMap.htm">UPS Time In Transit Map</a> 
 </h2>
<div align="center">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" style="border-collapse: collapse" width="90%" id="table3" height="1143">
<tr>
<td valign="top" height="1143"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" style="border-collapse: collapse" width="568" id="table4" height="1066">
<tr>
<td valign="top" width="591" align="center" colspan="3" height="229"><img src="texas_wht.gif" align="left" width="125" height="89">

<img border="0" src="PUREELEGANCEw.jpg" alt="Elegant Gourmet Gold Gift" align="right" width="245" height="242">
Gift Baskets make wonderful <a href="christmas.htm">Gifts </a>for that person who has everything. 
 
 
Whether you're looking for <a href="Sympathy%20Gift%20Baskets.htm">sympathy and condolence gift baskets</a>, <a href="Get%20Well%20Gifts.htm">get well gift baskets</a>, <a href="Gag%20Get%20Well.htm">gag get well gifts</a>, <a href="Texas%20_Regional.htm">Texas gift baskets</a>, 
<a href="Texas%20_Regional.htm">western themed gifts</a>, <a href="Children's%20Gift%20Baskets.htm">children's gift baskets</a>, <a href="Thank%20You%20Gifts.htm">thank you gifts</a>, <a href="Birthday%20Gift%20Baskets.htm">birthday gift baskets</a> 
 or any other type of gift, you've come to the right place. It doesn't matter whether you need 1 gift basket or 1000 gift baskets, you will receive the same friendly , helpful customer service. 

 
We are in the process of getting new gift basket designs ready for the Holiday and Christmas page. It's never to early to think about the gifts you will be sending this Holiday season. We would be delighted to speak with you and discuss your needs for Christmas gifts. We welcome orders for multiple gift baskets, but ask that you please order as early as possible. 
 </td>
</tr>

**CSS4Life** · 09-15-2007, 03:58 PM

The problem is you typed this in in the WYSIWYG editor - the basic typing editor place. Instead, this should have been typed in in the code interface area - I've looked at your code on your site (view source) and this is the problem, right at the top:

HTML Code:

&lt;meta name="verify-v1" 
content="F2qCXIKxVh2wdCnFkCVGTiiBLTEpe8+GbxMYvOeSBJM="/>

It DISPLAYS the < as <, but the code is < so a browser thinks you are trying to show this to visitors. Edit the website in the code editor section of Frontpage and paste in the code as the first thing under the <head> tag. That should fix the problem, and it will no longer display to visitors

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