XML is better than HTML for Search Engine Optimization. I created two web pages as examples for demonstration of this issue.
The first web page is built with HTML. One of the keywords in the META TAGS is “Nokia”. You can see word “Nokia” one time in the body text. The second web page is built with XML and CSS. It is viewable with Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. One of the keywords in the META TAGS is also “Nokia”. You can see the word “Nokia” three times in the body text – one time in text and two times in XML tags. XML is better than HTML for the first web page on your site, because you can use XML tags for SEO. You can put keywords from your META TAGS in XML tags. This approach increases the number of keywords in your body text and improves the ranking of your web site in Search Engines.
HTML web page:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta name="keywords" content="Nokia,mms,mobile">
<title>Untitled Document</title>
</head>
<body>
<Normal class=Default
style="COLOR: #000000; DISPLAY: block; FONT-STYLE: normal; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: left;
TEXT-DECORATION: none; TEXT-TRANSFORM: none; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><A
name=9000001></A>Choose from hundreds of exclusive mobile backgrounds for your colour mobile phone. If you have a Nokia, Ericsson, Sharp, Samsung, Panasonic or <br>
other colour mobile, then try any of our colour mobile backgrounds. Instantly downloadable - try one and instantly change the look of your mobile.
</Normal>
</body>
</html>
XML web page
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<?xml-stylesheet href="document.css" type="text/css"?>
<Document xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
  <html:title>edi-1-1.xml</html:title>
  <html:meta name="keywords" content="Nokia,mms,mobile" />
  <html:body>
   <html:blockquote>
<Nokia>
<Normal class="Default" style="display: block; color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0pt; margin-right: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: pt; text-transform:
none; vertical-align: baseline">
    <html:a name="9000001"> </html:a>
    Choose from hundreds of exclusive mobile backgrounds for your colour mobile phone. If you have a Nokia, Ericsson, Sharp, Samsung, Panasonic or other colour mobile, then try any of our colour mobile backgrounds. Instantly downloadable - try one and instantly change the look of your mobile.
  </Normal>
</Nokia>
   </html:blockquote>
   </html:body>
</Document>
Krassimir Stoynov is Manager of Creative Studio ( http://www.creativestudio.biz ) online publishing company specialized in XML development and eBooks creation.
