HTML & encoding
No HTML doctype declaration
One of the 136 checks Lala SEO runs on every page of a site in a free audit.
- How serious
- Worth knowing. Small, or only matters in some cases. Read it and decide.
- Based on
- Industry standard: Google does not document this one, so the check follows established practice.
What is wrong
Every webpage needs a doctype declaration at the very top of the HTML file. This is a single line—usually `<!DOCTYPE html>`—that tells the browser what version of HTML the page uses. Without it, your pages may render inconsistently across different browsers because each one has to guess what you meant.
Why it costs you
When a browser cannot find a doctype, it falls back to "quirks mode," which is an old compatibility layer designed for broken websites from the 1990s. Your page may display with wrong spacing, fonts, or layout in some browsers while working fine in others. This creates a poor and unpredictable experience for your visitors, and some older browsers may fail to render the page correctly at all.
How to fix it
Add `<!DOCTYPE html>` as the very first line of your HTML file, before the opening `<html>` tag. If you use a website builder or CMS, the doctype is usually added automatically—check your page source by right-clicking and selecting "View page source" to confirm it is there. If you edit HTML directly, place this declaration at the start of every template or page file.
What the audit tests
- The page's code starts with an HTML doctype declaration
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