Search Engine Optimization Tips Blog

Lot of us get confused with Pagerank and SERP position. We are not sure whether we need to have good pagerank for good SERP or whether pagerank is still important. We need to have a clear understanding of these two concepts whether we hire a company to optimize our website or we do it ourselves. Only when we know what pagerank and SERP position mean we will know what we are paying for when we hire an SEO company.

SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. This is the page in which search engine results are displayed when someone makes a search. These results depend on a number of factors including pagerank. Pagerank is specific to Google specific; Google rates all the websites and it ranks them based on their importance as per its algorithm. There are different views about pagerank some webmasters say that pagerank is of not importance as long as you get top position in the search results page. Whereas, some webmasters spend all their energy in increasing their pagerank.

There are cases where you can see a website getting listed within the top ten or twenty results irrespective of the pagerank. Sometimes even web pages that have good pagerank may not be listed in the top position where sites without any pagerank are listed. This indicates that pagerank does not decide your position in the search results page. The significance of pagerank comes when there is a huge competition. If you do not work on your pagerank then your competitor who has put in a lot of efforts to increase their pagerank may takeover your top positions.

We need to understand that pagerank is not directly equivalent to search rankings. The pagerank of the website is not revisited by Google as frequently as the SERP position. The SERP position keeps changing very frequently unlike the pagerank which takes at least 3 months before it is updated. Your position in SERP is based on many other factors including the relevancy of the content, its freshness and the keyword density etc., besides the pagerank.

Pagerank is almost directly linked with the number of inbound links that point to a website. When these links are also contextual links then the value of those links increase. So we can safely assume that greater the number of inbound links better the pagerank. Inbound links also have a significant role to play in SERP positioning. A page with highest number of inbound links is more likely to get listed on top whenever there is a stiff competition. Search engines use the strength of inbound links to decide about the website’s importance.

Ultimately what everyone is looking for is good website traffic; if you have good position in SERP then be happy but make sure that you hold on to your top position for ever because you can lose the position at anytime. So do everything that is possible within your limits to retain your position. At the same time don’t ignore the pagerank; you will only benefit from good pagerank and it can do no harm to you so make sure that you are in a better position to combat your competition.

Although XML validation is by no means a mandatory requirement for search engine optimization, sites that are XHTML compliant have certain advantages over sites that are not XHTML compliant. To understand the importance of XHTML compliance it is important to first understand what is XHTML? XHTML was designed to act as an improvement over HTML, with devices other than computers accessing the internet, it was important to develop a language that could ensure pages and sites were viewable across devices. In a nutshell, an XHTML compliant website is cross device compatible and handles errors more robustly.

Getting back to the topic, what does XHTML compliance have to do with SEO? XHTML compliance ensures easy accessibility by Google bots. Pages that are XHTML compliant are usually indexed much faster by Google and other search engines. Since XHTML code is also easier to ‘understand’, Google bots and other search engine bots have no trouble in accessing and downloading content on a regular basis. Apart from XHTML compliance, newer websites are also attempting to become HTML 4.01 compliant. News is, sites that are HMTL 4.01 compliant stand a better chance of frequent indexing and caching of pages. As it stands today, Google takes a very long time to index pages, pages that are XHTML compliant are usually given the option to be indexed faster by the Google Webmasters tool.

HTML 4.01 and XTHML were suffering from a little bit of an identity crisis; both were created and then left to fend for themselves. Google in particular has given the concepts of XHTML and HTML 4.01 a fresh lease of life by encouraging people to make their websites and web pages XHTML and HTML 4.01 compliant. XHTML and HTML 4.01 compliance alone cannot ensure better search engine ranking, there are numerous websites that are neither XHTML nor HTML 4.01 compliant but are ranking well with search engines.

What compliance with W3C standards ensures is that websites are ready for future changes in SEO and it also ensures that websites are easily accessible by various search engines. What is equally important to note is that there is a definite correlation between XHTML compliance and the rate at which sites are indexed and cached by Google. In addition, making pages XHTML compliant is also believed to protect pages from the dreaded Google 950 penalty. XHTML and HTML 4.01 compliant sites are also supposed to be protected against problems like the Google Supplement.

In conclusion, there is considerable speculation if XHTML and HMTL 4.01 compliance is important or not, but as is the case with most search engine optimization principles, there is no way to know for sure if a site that is XHTML compliant performs better than a site that is not XHTML compliant or not. Search engine optimization is not governed by a single factor like XTHML compliance or effective link building. It is therefore important to keep an eye out for various factors that might help improve the ranking of a website, XHTML and HTML 4.01 compliance is just one such thing.

Rishi Modi
Certified SEO Professional

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