SEO issue red characters in source code? > Why? Syntax highlighting? browser source code?_问答_开发者

Hi all

I'm building webstes using dreamweaver, but when I look at the source code it is red for " characters. I'm told anything appearing in red puts off Google's seo. Does anyone know why this appears in red?

For example when I view code source on the site i get the gt; in red

<a href="miss-sold-mortgages.html" class="darkblue">Find out more&gt;&gt;</a></span>
                </div>

Thanks for your help

Regards Judi

I'm told anything appearing in red puts off googles seo.

That is garbage.

Does anyone know why this appears in red?

Probably because it is an entity and has been marked by the syntax highlighter so you can spot in amongst literals.

Google SEO aside, it's important to understand that there's a world of difference between using CSS to control the colour of text, and the syntax highlighting done by the DreamWeaver editor.

Colours seen when you are viewing the HTML source of your page in a tool like Dreamweaver have nothing to do with the colours seen when viewing your page in a browser.

All that's happening is that Dreamweaver is syntax colouring HTML escape characters in red, I am pretty sure that you have nothing to worry about.

Edit

You clarified that in fact you're not viewing the HTML source in Dreamweaver.

Are you viewing source from Firefox?

Firefox syntax colours HTML in its "source of" viewer. HTML escape codes are shown in red (Firefox 3.6, Windows). The point still stands however that this is just syntax colouring and has nothing to do with how your page gets rendered by the browser, or anything to go with Google SEO.

This might be a bit off topic and of course no-brainer for you guys, but anyway:

Firefox highlights all open lines as red. If you have for example: meta content="text... and there is no /> at the end of the line, then Firefox makes that line appear red when you use "view page source".

Though that's not the reason for red highlight in your case.

I can view source in Firefox 11 (Win) and see bolded and non-bolded red highlighted markup. If I hover over the bolded red markup, I see a pop-up description of the problem Firefox is finding with the HTML source. For example:

Start tag seen without seeing a doctype first. Expected "<!DOCTYPE html>"
Start tag "div" seen in "table"
Stray end tag "table"
Stray end tag "div"

In non-bolded red highlighted syntax I see entities such as:  , &, >

Firefox 11 allows you to configure and use an external application to View Source. It also has several configuration values in about:config ("view_source.syntax.highlight" for example) that control how the feature is delivered.

The bolded red source highlighting in Firefox View Source may or may not cause issues with SEO. It's an indication that the browser is finding an issue with the HTML markup in the page you're viewing.

The issue of how much invalid HTML harms you with respect to SEO is debated. (And as pointed out in a separate answer, also depends on where the invalid markup appears.) This youtube video discusses HTML validation and Google SEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XlKn6I9rSc.

I'm told anything appearing in red puts off googles seo

No. Just no. Google's SEO works on a text-basis, it ignores any colouring or formatting within a page.

The colour of the text in the source code is simply based on DreamWeaver's syntax highlighting - if you run and view your page in a browser, it shouldn't be this colour (assuming you aren't actually setting the colour of this to red).

Google will check for color on same color text and background to make sure hidden keywords aren't being used on the page. To google, white on white text is a no-no.

In Dreamweaver, syntax highlight of HTML entities does not translate into a bad 'mark' in the SEO book.

Now on the other hand, if you have key phrases in your link text that includes (>)'s, then your SEO work for the key phrase is shot because the >'s are counted as part of the key phrase.

You can probably turn red highlighting of entities off in Dreamweaver's preferences....