How many browsers do you use in SEO? - November 23rd, 2007
During SEO, if we have to make changes in the code of a site, we obviously have to check to make sure that the changes we have made haven’t changed the layout of the page. While there are websites that will render images of the site as it would appear in many of the different browsers, it is possible to have all the browsers you require running on your machine (if you run Windows XP or Parallels on a Mac or VMWare…. you get the idea). So what are these more common browsers you should be checking your sites on?
Internet Explorer 6
If you have updated to SP2 on WinXP, then you can download a program called multiple IE that will let you have different varieties of IE on the same machine.
Internet Explorer 7
You can only use this if you have updated to SP2 on XP, and you can only do that if you have a valid copy of XP (if you don’t have one of those, shame on you!). Still, it has a different set of quirks to IE6, so you need to pay attention to both versions.
Firefox 2
It’s the main competitor to Internet Explorer. If you work in the SEO industry, you should be using this as standard anyway. Also worth looking at Firefox 3 now that it is moving towards release candidate status.
Safari 2/3
It used to be Mac OSX only, but you can get Safari 3 beta for Windows now.
Opera
It always seems to be overlooked, yet has some great features. While it isn’t a mainstream browser in the same way as IE6/7 or Firefox, or even Safari, it is the most used of the rest, and as such you should pay attention to it.
There are a lot of other web browsers out there, but if you can get your site looking the same in these 5 browsers, then the chances that it won’t work in another browser is very remote. It will take 5 minutes to check, but can save you a lot of visitors who are turned away by your sloppy looking website that looks all funny in Internet Explorer 6.
Another suggestion, is that it is worthwhile to check that your site is at least readable in lynx or another text browser. This can also help you with SEO, as what you see in the text browser is much the same as what search engines see.
James
SEO Programmer
