Seo?

[gnurf]

I'm just too lazy and busy to search so i thought asking here is the easiest way:

Does XWD generated html affect SEO (Search Engine Optimization)? Asking because one thing that has been pointed out is the div and text line "soup", and I wonder how search engines react on that. Also, as far as I know, some search engines "rank" hits by heading tags, meaning the structure of H1, H2, ... P tags are actually important.

[Charles Moir]

No, search engines do not put any importance on <H1> links or any other links. For that matter not even, it is said, keyword tags.

The mis-named 'tag soup' is in fact a lot simpler and more straightforward than most websites, and can be indexed perfectly normally by any search engine. So your text is perfectly visible and indexable (is that a word) by Search Engines.

SEO is all about the content - the text. Your ranking is affected by the quality and relevance of your text, and more so by the inbound links and the quality of the sites linking to you.

[remi]

No, search engines do not put any importance on <H1> links or any other links. For that matter not even, it is said, keyword tags.

Charles, you can't say that, because _nobody_ knows the algorithms of Google, so it's not serious saying something like that from your side. You will find contests out there, organized from Computer magazines or others, were so called "SEO experts" can try to get the biggest rank within Google or other search engines. But in the end, nobody knows, when Google will change their algorithm the next time (there were some changes in the last years).

The mis-named 'tag soup' is in fact a lot simpler and more straightforward than most websites, and can be indexed perfectly normally by any search engine. So your text is perfectly visible and indexable (is that a word) by Search Engines.

It's not mis-named, Charles.
I agree, that some other websites look more terrible, but your exported HTML code is not "perfectly" indexable by Search Engines. Maybe some search engines will use it without problems, but "perfectly" is a marketing exaggeration.

Remi

[Charles Moir]

Sorry Remi, but I'm taking this. If you continue to criticise the product and the opinions of people who know a lot more about it than you do, then I have to ask why you're here?

Tag soup implies a mix, a soup - as you know perfectly well our HTML is very clean, very simple, this is not an opinion, it is a fact. It is just a set of plain text lines one after another placed on the page where the user puts them. We use fewer tags than almost everyone else. Our HTML IS simpler than that from almost all other web authoring software.

Our HTML IS indexable by all search engines, this is fact. And you're continued implications and suggestions that this is not the case are misleading.

So I have to assume you're being trouble maker for the hell of it. You don't want to continue down that line.

[remi]

So I have to assume you're being trouble maker for the hell of it. You don't want to continue down that line.

Excuse me?
Maybe I will comment this a little bit later.

[pauland]

Our HTML IS simpler than that from almost all other web authoring software.

I find this particular statement rather difficult to accept. While it may be true for the kind of web layout software that XWD is, it's just untrue compared to other web authoring software. In particular, most authoring software doesn't generate multiple text fields for single paragaphs of text, so the html they produce in 'design' mode is far simpler than that generated by XWD.

This isn't a dig at XWD, which is a great program with some technical limitations from an authoring POV, but blanket statements such as that above go a little too far.

If anyone reading this is wondering why they should use XWD rather than software that potentially produces leaner HTML code, well they shouldn't wonder, they should use XWD. XWD bypasses the hassles of complex layout by generating HTML code in a specific way. Generating those layouts in most other authoring programs requires a great deal of skill and knowledge about HTML.

XWD is superb at what it does at a great price point.

[Charles Moir]

Well I'd agree that blocks of text HTML can be simpler, but that overall you just need to look the source HTML of almost any commercial website to see the very definition of HTML soup. They use much more complex HTML. I just did a 'view source' on this page. Makes my point nicely.

We can't accurately output whole blocks of text. The WYSIWYG requirement - the very point of this product makes that difficult to impossible. So we split a block of text into simple plain HTML lines, positioned exactly where you see them in WD.

The question asked was whether our HTML was anti-search engine, and it's not. We know, and tests show, WD websites are searched and indexed just fine by search engines.

[covoxer]

Charles, you can't say that, because _nobody_ knows the algorithms of Google, so it's not serious saying something like that from your side.

Yes, nobody knows. But developers of those algorythms are not that stupid to give anyone this easy way to fool their engine. Just imagine that site which contains all the text within <h1> elements rated higher than properly structured one with less important sub headers, never mind the non header text.
That's the reason why they completely ignore the meta tags for example. To be the most obective as to the content of the site, search engine has to get as close to the real human perception of the page as possible. And it is not even near to the htm structuring. And you know it for sure.
It's easy to give a page look absolutely irrelevant to it's internal structure. So good SEO cant rely on structure.

I agree, that some other websites look more terrible, but your exported HTML code is not "perfectly" indexable by Search Engines. Maybe some search engines will use it without problems, but "perfectly" is a marketing exaggeration.

Now how can you know this if:

_nobody_ knows the algorithms of Google

[covoxer]

Oh yes, really, it's easy to prove that WD pages are indexed well. Just enter any arbitrary fragment of text from the Gary's workbook into Google, I enetered this one: "Professional website designers can use Xara Web Designer", and it gave me the correct link to this page on the first place.
Here: http://www.google.com/search?client=...utf-8&oe=utf-8

This is a WD produced page.
Of course, it's a long text so it easily got to 1st position, if you enter something that may appear on higher rated sites then it will go down, but it is perfectly indexed and searchable. Or you have troubles finding something on the WD pages out there?

[Spinny]

For whatever it's worth (and I'm primarily a CoffeeCup user so I'm far from being a Xara fanboi) I looked at the page source of the sample/work page Charles linked at the top of this forum today. Even as a comparable HTML novice I found it no problem to follow the code--far, far easier to follow for me than the table-happy stuff that's so common out there. Puzzling out tables-within-tables? Forget it.