W3C Validation and SEO

October 11th, 2006, 9:02 pm

How important, if at all, is W3C validation in terms of SEO?

October 11th, 2006, 9:54 pm

Validated strict code has no effect on SEO. Search engines strip out most code, they are only interested in content.

I'm confused though, your poll seems to be on a different subject.

October 12th, 2006, 1:41 am

W3C validation in terms of SEO

Validation plays an important role in terms of SEO too. If website is nt validated it do creates problem for search engine to crawl your website.
Once you validate your website its free with errors....

October 12th, 2006, 5:24 pm

meman,

You seem so sure about the fact that w3c validation of syntax does not affect the placement of a web site within the SERPs. I believe it does. I believe anything you can do to make your web site more user friendly and more compatible across multiple platforms and browsers has a big impact on your ranking. So W3C validation may not have a HUGE impact it self but I do believe it helps. It's one of the many things that you can do to optimize for search engines (search engines want to please the user, the more you do to make your site user friendly and compatible will help) when developing a web site.

It also makes you look a little more professional and trusted to search engines. Just like if you register your domain for 20 years ahead or if you spend a decent ammount of money on online advertisements google factors all of those things and many other things when ranking a web site I believe.

So.......... In conclusion I believe w3c validation does help with SEO. It may not have a huge impact but I do believe it will give a web site a little boost.

- Jacob

- Jacob

October 13th, 2006, 6:48 am

Quote:

Validation plays an important role in terms of SEO too. If website is nt validated it do creates problem for search engine to crawl your website.

Once you validate your website its free with errors....

Bad code does not make it difficult for search engines to crawl., Search engines do no render the code like a browser does, It does not see the page, It looks at the words between tags.

SEO_Pro:
Matt Cutts, Google engineer, said there is no signal in the google algo for valid markup
Obviously it's best if your site validates, but as for SEO, it makes no difference.

October 15th, 2006, 8:46 pm

meman wrote:

Quote:

Validation plays an important role in terms of SEO too. If website is nt validated it do creates problem for search engine to crawl your website.

Once you validate your website its free with errors....

Bad code does not make it difficult for search engines to crawl., Search engines do no render the code like a browser does, It does not see the page, It looks at the words between tags.

SEO_Pro:
Matt Cutts, Google engineer, said there is no signal in the google algo for valid markup
Obviously it's best if your site validates, but as for SEO, it makes no difference.

But for user friendly website i hopw u must agree with this fact that website must be free with errors, in same way validation is important in seo too. Search engines read the page coding from the top down. Having valid clean code will make it easier for the search engine spider to index your page..

October 16th, 2006, 12:47 am

simmi wrote:

W3C validation in terms of SEO

Validation plays an important role in terms of SEO too. If website is nt validated it do creates problem for search engine to crawl your website.
Once you validate your website its free with errors....

But it seems to be impossible to have 0 errors because I check Yahoo website has lot of errors also. Do you know some sites that has no errors when you validate the site in W3C?

October 16th, 2006, 2:06 am

khasmoth wrote:

simmi wrote:

W3C validation in terms of SEO

But it seems to be impossible to have 0 errors because I check Yahoo website has lot of errors also. Do you know some sites that has no errors when you validate the site in W3C?

well yes i myself worked so many sites that dosent hve errors but unfourtaneutly i cant disclose sites names as it was my previous organization client' s websites otherwise i would have shown you the sites created by me have error or not . i understand its hard to believe that websites dnt hv errors as u said yahoo has i knw yahoo has even google has bt they themselves are such big names and nw might be dosent matter to it i hv read articles that validation is imp... read this

http://www.htmlbasictutor.ca/code-valid ... n-code.htm,

October 16th, 2006, 11:05 pm

Hardly impossible. Having a validated site can improve you rankings. Who wants to link to a site that border line crashers their pc? Good site with good code=more back links. More back links = better ranking.

October 17th, 2006, 9:20 am

simmi wrote:

But for user friendly website i hopw u must agree with this fact that website must be free with errors, in same way validation is important in seo too.

For user friendly sites it helps to have valid code, But it's not essensial. Search engines don't look at code though and they don't render pages. Look at your site using a text based browser. That is how search engines see your pages, The coding makes no difference to them.

simmi wrote:

Search engines read the page coding from the top down. Having valid clean code will make it easier for the search engine spider to index your page..

No it doesn't, Matt cutts said it doesn't, He is a google engineer. He knows what he is talking about. Search engines strip out the vast majority of code and they only look at the text, bold, underline, itallic and H tags. They don't look at CSS, tables, divs or anything else and they don't render the page like a browser does.

camp185 wrote:

Hardly impossible. Having a validated site can improve you rankings. Who wants to link to a site that border line crashers their pc? Good site with good code=more back links. More back links = better ranking.

You are joking, right? You go to W3 and check that a site is valid before linking to it?

October 17th, 2006, 9:43 am

Joking? Did you just write that without checking yourself? I checked before I posted, and I check again now.

My site is compliant with zero errors. It may not be on every page, but I know it is on most of them. I check all of them every few weeks. The home page certainly is: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http% ... ype=Inline

Sorry meman, but I am going to have to agree with SEO_Pro on this one. Also, W3C might not be a technical way of SEO right now for google, but you cannot deny that it someday may be, and it surely cood be already with another search engine. Heck, it may even be a marketing technique for searh engines in the future...like making your search query pull up only w3c sites. It may not be the biggest market, but there are a lot of people out there who need w3c sites.

October 17th, 2006, 10:05 am

The argument wasn't that it might one day be a factor in SEO, People were claiming that it is a factor in SEO now and that is just plain wrong, Incorrect, missleading information...

October 17th, 2006, 10:37 am

meman wrote:

The argument wasn't that it might one day be a factor in SEO, People were claiming that it is a factor in SEO now and that is just plain wrong, Incorrect, missleading information...

So what do you think will produce better results in a search engine?

<pHot Babes</p> Fails compliance test

Or

<p>Hot Babes</p> Passes test

October 17th, 2006, 10:53 am

<pHot Babes</p> isn't "invalid" code, It's just wrong. Obviously if you want a search engine to take note of bold, underline or header tags it finds on your page you have to at least close and open the tags properly. But that isn't what W3C validation is and you know it, You are just being pedantic.

October 17th, 2006, 11:05 am

Pedantic? Classic! Isn't that what being compliant is about? You either pass or don't. I don't think the validator says "Your doing a good job, but you made one little error.". Also, that may be one stupid typo, but could be a big mistake when you suddenly drop in hits by 30%.