Web Notes

robots.txt and XML Sitemaps

Two files at the root of your site that decide what gets crawled and what gets found. Small, easy to write, and easy to break in ways that remove a wh...

HTML

Internal Linking and Anchor Text

Links are how pages are discovered and how importance flows through a site. The text inside them is how a crawler learns what the destination is about...

HTML

How Google Works: Crawling, Indexing and Ranking

Four stages between publishing a page and someone finding it. Knowing which stage a problem sits in is what turns SEO from guesswork into debugging.

HTML

GET or POST: What Happens When a Form Is Submitted

Two methods, two very different places for your data. Learn which to use, what is safe in a URL, and why neither is encrypted on its own.

HTML

Absolute, Relative and Root Relative URLs

The same page, three ways to point at it. Learn how a browser resolves each form, when a leading slash saves you, and why one broken dot breaks an ent...

HTML

HTML Document Structure: DOCTYPE, html, head and body

Every page is built from the same four parts. Learn what the doctype actually does, why html carries the lang attribute, and the rule that decides whe...

HTML

What is HTML: The Structure Layer of Every Web Page

HTML is a markup language, not a programming language. It labels content so that browsers, search engines and assistive technology all agree on what e...