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Up until this point, whenever I heard someone from Microsoft start talking about standards, I couldn't help but laugh while thinking of how badly IE has butchered them in the past. Standards compliance was somewhat improved with IE7, but it sounds like Microsoft has finally agreed to step up to the plate and make IE8's standards mode actually standards-compliant.

MS has fought standards-compliance as the rest of the world knows it for several iterations of IE, knowing that it would break a lot of old sites that were specifically targeted towards IE's faults. With IE8 they will admitedly break sites that do not specifically request a special http header/meta tag to trigger IE7 standards mode. It will be quite interesting to see how many sites this affects. I'm guessing a VERY large number.

Since some (but certainly not all) of the rendering differences between IE and standards-compliant browsers have been due to a certain degree of ambiguity in the W3C documentation, Microsoft's definition of "the most standards compliant way possible" may be far different than that of Firefox or Safari. It would be nice if they just used Firefox and Safari's interpretation of the W3C standards, but I'm sure that Microsoft will come up with their own creative way of interpreting them.

So kids, this is why you code to standards and make IE the exception, not the rule. For those who ignored the standards evangelists, let the fun begin...

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Well, if you're a frequent (or even infrequent) visitor to my blog, you'll notice that I've changed up the theme quite a bit. I was never really completely happy with the old one, and did quite a bit of searching to find one I liked better, but could never find one that really jumped out at me. So, after much procrastination, I finally decided to buckle down and create a theme of my own. I'm much more happy with this one - it's cleaner, more readable, and not as cluttered as the old one.

Hopefully, I'll have the time (and motivation) to work on it more over the next few weeks. There are still a few things that I want to do with it before I call it done. I'm planning on adding an "About" page, fine tuning the code to ensure W3C standards compliance, and possibly making the panoramic image above into a slideshow.

I've tested the new theme in FF 2/Mac, Safari 3/Mac, and IE6/Win, and there were no glaring issues. I'll be testing in IE7 tomorrow, but I don't anticipate any major issues. If you happen so see anything crazy going on, please let me know by leaving a comment on this post.

Thanks!

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1. Use semantic markup.

   When ranking a page, search engines place a higher emphasis on text contained within certain HTML tags such as <title> and <h1>. Semantically speaking, these should be the most important pieces of information on the page and should convey the idea of the post in just a few carefully chosen words.

   Take a moment to view the source of your blog to make sure it is semantically well designed (top-level headings should be enclosed in <h1> tags, paragraphs within your body text should be contained within <p> tags, etc.). If not, you may be able to make a few tweaks that will help you out quite a bit.

2. Link to posts in popular blogs.

   Part of the formula that search engines use to determine your ranking is based upon how many highly-ranked sites link to you. Most blogs allow pingbacks and/or trackbacks which will result in a link back to your website if you link to a post of theirs.

   Note: I wouldn't recommend abusing this technique or you'll just look like an idiot trying to get linkbacks. Post links to relevant articles, and not just for the sake of linking to something popular.

3. Use the tools provided by the search engines.

   Google's Webmaster Tools is a perfect example of this. One of the things you can do with it (aside from finding out a bunch of information on how your pages are crawled and indexed) is submit a sitemap. It only takes a few minutes and there's even a sitemap plugin that does all the work for you if you use WordPress. (I'm sure there are plugins for other blogging software, but I've never used them personally). There are no official findings that I know of, but there is some speculation that Google gives your page rank a boost for providing a sitemap.

4. Take the time to write good, keyword-rich content.

   Good content is a HUGE part of your ranking in more ways than one. It's what the search engines are ultimately trying to find for their users. Sure, they use all kinds of complicated algorithms and crazy secret formulas, but it's only because they can't think like a human and have to rely on things like keyword density to determine relevance.

   Don't just slap your posts together. If you don't take the time to write them well, then nobody is going to take the time to read them. Use spell check. Think about the message you are trying to convey. Be informative, but concise, or your readers will get bored and leave. The more people who find your blog useful and/or enjoyable, the more traffic and backlinks you will get, and the higher your ranking will climb.

5. Use stylesheets and external Javascript.

   Hundreds of lines of embeded styles and Javascript in the <head> tag of your page just gives the search engine more code to sort through before it gets to the important stuff (your content - in case you forgot #4 already). Linking to external files has other benefits as well, such as faster page load and bandwidth savings due to caching.

6. Find a topic and stick to it.

   Make sure your blog stays focused. Writing about different breeds of dogs one day, then classic cars the next, then corporate finance the following day won't keep your readers reading and won't get you to the number one spot on Google for any of the three topics. The more you write consistently about the same subject, the more of your pages with the same keywords the search engines will index, and the more your site will make it to the results pages when someone searches for your blog's topic.

7. Clean up your URLs.

   Most blogging software has a way to rewrite your post's URL so it's not some ugly string of random gibberish like "http://example.com/?p=18&a=view". Instead, it'll look something like "http://example.com/how-to-clean-up-ugly-urls/". Take a look at the URL of this post for another example. A clean human-readable URL gives the search engines one more place to find those oh-so-important keywords. Even if this gives you little or no boost in ranking, it looks prettier and more professional.

8. Be the first to write about something.

   It's often difficult to come up with topics that nobody else has written about, but there are those rare opportunities when you get the first look at a new technology or product, or have an original take on an existing topic. This is what happened to me with the new Google Analytics beta. My account was one of the first to be switched over, and I wrote a post about it. To my surprise, for a short time, I wound up at the top of Google for the keywords "google analytics beta".

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Search Engine Optimization

Search engines place greater emphasis on certain tags within your page, such as <title> and <h1>. This means that pages with the keywords a user is searching for in the title and top level headings will get a bump in the search results vs. pages with the keywords in <p> or other less important tags. For more on SEO benefits of semantic markup, check out this great post on semantic markup for blogs at pearsonified.com.

Accessibility

Semantically marked up pages result in greater accessibility. For example, screen readers can't decipher a top level heading from the rest of your content unless it is surrounded by <h1> tags. This is not to say that using semantic markup will guarantee that your site will be fully accessible, but it's a good start. For more on accessibility, see The W3C Accessibility Initiative website.

Maintainability

Semantic markup is easier to maintain. Sure, you could surround all of your headings with <div> or <span> tags, but then you'd have to specify a class or an ID in order to accurately target them with CSS. If you have all of your top level headings in <h1> tags and all your paragraphs in <p> tags, then when it comes time to style your page, you can just style the elements themselves and you don't have to worry about classes or IDs. Overall, you'll end up with less clutter in your pages and your stylesheets.

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