SEO Consult Blog

As many of you are aware XHTML is the replacement for HTML but just what exactly are the differences between the two? and is it really worth the switch over? Let’s find out.

HTML’s specifications where originally created by a physicist named Tim Berners-Lee. Over the years HTML’s codebase became an international standard (ISO/IEC 15445:2000) this meant that it was now possible to follow a certain guideline of industry standard coding and rendering HTML, the latter of course has most importance to the browsers.

The differences are very minor, but the results of switching can be worth the effort. The primary benefit is that XHTML is more widely accepted in non “computer” devices like mobile phones, palm devices and other scaled down browsers. This is one of the benefits of XHTML’s portability between devices.

XHTML is also extensible, which basically means that any new tags can be added without a new document type declaration.

What’s the difference between transitional and strict?

In short, transitional is a more forgiving form of doctype as it allows depreciated tags and attributes to pass validation, and the browser will do its best to render the page as you wanted it. You must still have the properly nested lowercase tags to obtain validation though.

The strict doctype is just that, all the depreciated tags and attributes will fail to validate under a strict doctype and may well render incorrectly as well.

So how does this affect me as an SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)?

With the incline of portable devices with internet ready capabilities more users are flocking in their hundreds and thousands to the web be it work, rest or play. Websites now more than ever are under constant scrutiny from these portable devices and in order to capture users from this ever increasing market websites are going to have to be compliant.