Posts Tagged ‘XHTML’
HTML Anchor
The Anchor has two important functions in HTML. First it is the main method for interlinking HTML documents and non-HTML media using the href attribute. It can also be used to jump to a location within a HTML document using the id attribute.
1 | <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk">BBC Online</a> |
The hash # symbol can be used to jump to any element with an ID attribute. The link below will jump to to the top of the current page, which has an attribute id=”header”.
1 | <a href="#header">Jump to Page Header</a> |
rel=”nofollow”
The nofollow attribute is used to stop search engines using links to affect the ranking of pages in an index. The idea was originally developed by Google as a way to stop links being use to artificially inflating the ranking of a specific page.
1 | <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.spamsite.com/">discount drugs</a> |
Most search engines will follow the links but exclude them from their ranking calculations (Goole, Yahoo). Others leave the link without following it or using the links (MSN). Some search engines still don’t recognise the attribute (Ask) and use the link like any other.
The most common use of nofollow is on blogs where spammers can often post comments which contain links to various websites. Nofollow should be used when a link is unknown, when the editor cannot vouch for its authenticity. This is the case when a third party leaves a comment on a website.
