SEO For Artists

OK, time to put my own advice to work. I’ve been writing so much about search engine optimization and building my new website that I realized that along the way, I better make sure I’m writing with valid CSS and XHTML. I was able to validate the CSS or stylesheet of my blogs with very little tweaking. I can display the valid CSS icons on each of them. The problem was my XHTML.

I’ve been using Windows Live Writer to write my blog posts. It’s a wonderful program
that is so powerful in what it allows a writer to do in terms of style. I can easily add
Flickr images, Technorati tags and more. It’s a godsend. What I didn’t realize though
was a minor setting change to make sure I was writing valid XHTML. If you go to your
weblog settings-Advanced, there is an option for markup type. Make sure XHTML is
selected.

Why does this matter? Writing with valid CSS and XHTML is more SEO friendly. Your
pages load quicker. Your pages load properly in different browsers. That’s important
if you’re trying to market yourself or just if you want to found and read without any
glitches. Half of the time you devote to your art business is your marketing, so it
pays to invest the time to make it more effective.

Regular readers may have noticed a change in themes. Again, valid code was my
goal. The Options theme that I’m using here and the Semiologic theme I moved my
Mysterious Issues
blog to accomplish just that. From a blogger’s point-of-view, they are so much
more user-friendly too.

Another tip for valid code. I created a mini template that uses code for a valid
XHTML page including just barebones header info and a blank body tag. Regular posts
of course, don’t have a doctype declaration or anything like that, but by pasting my
content code in my template, I can run it through a
XHTML validator and verify my
code. What I also use is a NotePad file where I keep the often used bits of code
like link tags, etc., so when I’m writing, I can copy and paste what I know is good
code to avoid errors. Every bit helps. In the meantime, I’m testing and testing to
make sure my blogs contain valid CSS and XHTML.