In Part 1 of the series, I talked about how using a HTML editor is a bad idea. In this part, I’ll expand  more on why this is a bad idea, and let you in on some trade secrets.. well, not really but it’s some really good information.

HTML Editor Limitations
We run into clients all of the time that have used a web-based editor to create their site, usually provided by their hosting company. While you may think they are providing a great service, in reality they are costing you visitors, and even a high search engine position.

In the SEO world, we use certain HTML tags and Meta tags to tell the search engines certain information about your site, so they know better understand what your site is about. For instance, having the right title tag is very important. It helps tell the search engines what the page is about, which they use to decide how relevant your site is on a given topic.

The problem is that some editors, especially the web based ones, don’t let you control the title. The title you choose for one page, is really used site-wide, which is a no-no in Search Engine Marketing.

We’ve had problems with editors not using Header tags, using JavaScript for links (which search engines can’t read) and not allowing additional pages to be added to the site. These are just a few examples of things we have run into when optimizing clients’ sites that use this type of editor. I could tell you horror stories for hours on some of the things we’ve had to deal with, and some have even resulted into a complete rebuild and server move of a site.

Problems are not just limited to the web-based editors, but some of the software based programs cause some problems also, although not as severe. Some of the problems associated with software editors is proprietary code (Microsoft Front Page), code that only works in certain browsers and just plain badly formatted code (making your file size larger, which means slower load times).

If you have to use an editor, I would recommend Dreamweaver. While it’s code could be a bit cleaner, it’s not as bad as some, and the learning curve is pretty small.

Next time: Things to consider when building a website.

Tags: html editors, Web Design, Website

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 5:54 pm and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.