When creating a web site in HTML it is important to remember that popular browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and others are capable of displaying web pages even if their code is not 100% compliant with the accepted standards for HTML as set down by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

So, while a page may look fine onscreen, it could be riddled with HTML errors causing serious obstacles for the search engine spiders who visit your site to index it.

HTML coding errors are especially common with WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) design programs such as Microsoft FrontPage or NetObjects Fusion and, since this type of software is often used by web designers with little or no experience of HTML, most of the time they can go unnoticed and thus cause long-term damage to a site’s search engine performance.

For those designers with only a minimal knowledge of HTML this can present an almost invincible problem since they cannot tell compliant code from its non-compliant counterpart.

But there’s nothing to worry, the W3C site includes a number of valuable tools designed to help web designers check their sites for any flaws and make the necessary corrections.

The most important among these are the HTML Validator and the Link Checker.

The HTML Validator detects and lists any coding errors present within a page and lists them in detail, thus enabling even designers with minimal HTML experience to make the necessary adjustments.

The Link Checker examines all links within the page both to other pages in the site and to images which are to be displayed onscreen.
Once again this enables the designer to pinpoint bad links or broken resources and take the required steps.

It should be noted that most quality web design programs have inbuilt link checking utilities which perform the same function, so a little reading up on your software can be of great help.