I'm a complete newbie at SEO and website development, but I was trying to make some changes to my CoffeeCup website and am feeling fairly overwhelmed. To start, I used W3C Markup Validation Service to review my homepage (www.margaretedits.com) and got the following errors but have no idea how to fix them. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Error Line 87, Column 73: document type does not allow element "META" here
<meta name="p:domain_verify" content="64d153c67fe1d17790dc7e9254873e0f" >
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The element named above was found in a context where it is not allowed. This could mean that you have incorrectly nested elements -- such as a "style" element in the "body" section instead of inside "head" -- or two elements that overlap (which is not allowed).

One common cause for this error is the use of XHTML syntax in HTML documents. Due to HTML's rules of implicitly closed elements, this error can create cascading effects. For instance, using XHTML's "self-closing" tags for "meta" and "link" in the "head" section of a HTML document may cause the parser to infer the end of the "head" section and the beginning of the "body" section (where "link" and "meta" are not allowed; hence the reported error).

Error Line 176, Column 114: there is no attribute "DATA-SHOW-COUNT"
…class="twitter-follow-button" data-show-count="false">Follow @margaretedits</a>
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You have used the attribute named above in your document, but the document type you are using does not support that attribute for this element. This error is often caused by incorrect use of the "Strict" document type with a document that uses frames (e.g. you must use the "Transitional" document type to get the "target" attribute), or by using vendor proprietary extensions such as "marginheight" (this is usually fixed by using CSS to achieve the desired effect instead).

This error may also result if the element itself is not supported in the document type you are using, as an undefined element will have no supported attributes; in this case, see the element-undefined error message for further information.

How to fix: check the spelling and case of the element and attribute, (Remember XHTML is all lower-case) and/or check that they are both allowed in the chosen document type, and/or use CSS instead of this attribute. If you received this error when using the <embed> element to incorporate flash media in a Web page, see the FAQ item on valid flash.

Error Line 177, Column 8: required attribute "TYPE" not specified
<script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.te…
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The attribute given above is required for an element that you've used, but you have omitted it. For instance, in most HTML and XHTML document types the "type" attribute is required on the "script" element and the "alt" attribute is required for the "img" element.

Typical values for type are type="text/css" for <style> and type="text/javascript" for <script>.

Here's what I would suggest. Looks to me like you created this site a long time ago and some of the code has since been changed in the standards. I would suggest making a full backup of the current files for the site and once you have that safely tucked away somewhere else on your computer open the current site and resave every page of the site. There are code setups on your pages that are very old and are no longer acceptable setup the way they are and that "should" fix some of the issues. One of the biggest issues right now is that the doctype is not correctly setup.

Make sure you are on the most current version of VSD when you do this Save thing for each page so that it will save the pages in current code structures.

If that doesn't work (not sure it will, I don't use VSD am just figuring this is something that should fix some of the erorrs), then I would highly suggest you redo your site. It's not a real complex site so I don't think it would take very long and you would end up with a more current structure and correct coding.

Also for some reason you have your Google code in the body of your page, and that should be in the head section of the page.

Hope that helps and let us know how you get on with it or if you need more assistance.

Thanks for the response, but I still have a couple of questions:

1. What is the most current version of VSD, and if I don't have it, how do I get it?
2. I know my Google code is in the wrong place, but I'm not sure how to find it and then where to move it to. Could you please send instructions?

Best,
Margaret

https://www.coffeecup.com/help/myproducts/

Thanks!

Which google code ?

if you are talking about the verification code that belongs in the head section, easy cheat that i do, is i put it in an html box covering the top left corner of my home page, it serves as a constant visual reminder that is where it lives.

works perfectly in Google and yahoo webmasters tools to verify

Thanks for the tip!