Validation & Error Correcting For SEO: Whats the hype?
Hey all, after having a few discussions with Travel Agent he helped me to make sure my sites were error less as much as they could be, according to W3C & Tidy HTML.

I wanted to know your thoughts and ideas on why correcting these errors is better for SEO. Especially when www.searchengineoptomization.com has such errors yet they are rank very high?

Thanks for your input!

Well, from my experience, you don't have to work out every single coding kink. However, the site has to be fully functional and legible enough for a SE bot not to think that it's garbage.

By fully functional, I mean no JS errors, legible CSS and try to close html tags.

It's not like it's SEO versus Error Correction; it's more like a coherent site that meets the requirements above will not jeopardize its own SEO efforts.

theseokit -- for starters, your link doesn't relate to your question, but yasha78 is not correct either ... why else would W3C set standards for sites?

C'mon people -- use that last 1/4 braincell you have and use common sense ... if 3/4 of the Webmasters around the world make sure their sites are 100% code-compliant according to W3C, what's the use?

That means that any idiot could put up a site; but it doesn't mean it would get indexed, does it?

100% correct coding means you get indexed properly in ALL Browsers; unless you don't care about it -- much less care about accessibility for those who are handicapped ... it pays to truly know what you're talking about regarding SEO and SE position.

I'd have to agree with yasha78 here. While W3C compliance may be helpful to your rankings, it appears to be far from necessary. As long as the site can be spidered by the search engine's bots, it will be indexed. W3C compliance is important for accessibility and other reasons, but doesn't seem to be a big part of any SE's algorithm at the moment.

Originally Posted by travelagent

100% correct coding means you get indexed properly in ALL Browsers;

Indexing has nothing to do with browsers. Non compliant pages get indexed and rank no problem (I've seen pages indexed that contain really bad errors). Do a quick survey of a few #1 ranking pages - do they validate?

Originally Posted by gringo

Indexing has nothing to do with browsers. Non compliant pages get indexed and rank no problem (I've seen pages indexed that contain really bad errors). Do a quick survey of a few #1 ranking pages - do they validate?

Not the best choice of wording on my part; yes, I see thousands of sites daily ranked in the #1 slot and the coding is absolutely horrible ... yet, when I see the age of the site, many were done way back when validation / proper coding wasn't an issue like it is today.

You need W3C compliant websites because you owe it to the people with disabilities that visit your website.

How are deaf people supposed to hear some fancy videos that explain the services provided by a certain online company? And when the website is flash and screen readers (and search engines, by the way) can only read text, how are blind people supposed to find their way back or forward? Since we don't live alone in this "seeing world", site owners owe it to these people to create accessible websites.

W3C compliance is good for SEO, because search engines are user focused. They will definitely place W3C and ADA compliant websites higher on the SERPs. They will certainly give such websites higher rankings; not over night, but they will because W3C and ADA compliant websites are user oriented and accessible for all. Such websites prove awareness and care for the less fortunate people.

But is the W3C compliance enough? No - ADA has some important guidelines regarding accessibility, guidelines that should be respected by all web designers ... here's some guidelines on the WebAIM website

Lastly; according to W3C standards...

* Future Web sites will have to be coded according to standards to shorten both development and maintenance time.

* But future adjustments to these Web pages will become more and more difficult as the variety of access methods increases. Following standards is your first step to solve this problem. Using only Web standards will help you to ensure that all browsers, old and new, will display your site properly, without frequent and time-consuming rewrites.

Personally, I've always preferred to have 100% code-compliant sites from a standpoint of doing it right the first time -- apparently many others don't care what their site(s) look like, just as long as they can "throw something up and hope it sticks" ... pretty pathetic attitude, IMO.

It might be of benefit for many to read what they say about standards

Matt cutts said there is no signal for valid code in thier algo.
Having validated code isn't going to help you rank better.

Should you validate though? Yeah, probably. But it doesn't effect your SEO.

Whoa, I didnt mean to get anything started here. I have also been looking around and the statment: It helps the SE read your site, more correctly I guess is a good way to ensure it will get index with every SE properly. As we all know there are 1000's of them.

Originally Posted by stOx

Matt cutts said there is no signal for valid code in thier algo.
Having validated code isn't going to help you rank better.

Should you validate though? Yeah, probably. But it doesn't effect your SEO.

Mehh -- I don't go by personal feelings / opinions, as you haven't provided any proof ... however, you might want to argue with Matt Cutts, as it seems he continues to talk about having valid code

Heres Matt Cutts, Google engineer, saying "Google have no signal at present for valid code". So not only is it not part of thier ranking algo, But they don't even have a way of identifying valid code.

He goes on to say there is a "good reason" why they don't do this. And it's because 40% of sites have markup errors. So why would google - Whos goal is to send people to sites with quality information - Worry about something as trivial as a couple of markup errors? They simply wouldn't, Not if the information on the site is what the searcher is looking for.

Is it worth validating your code? Yes it is. It helps with cross browser compatibility and end user optimization.
Does Google care? Not in the slightest.

Yes; I watched the video too before posting the link -- like I said; I prefer to do things 100% accurate, which includes having valid code ... each to his own.

Good, Well done on wanting to do things well and have validated code.
Everyone should do that.

It still doesn't help with SEO though.

travelagent, Matt is completely right. I think writing valid code is a good idea too and I do what I can to make every site I build validate both for basic standards and for accessibility.

But it will have absolutely no effect on seo. Search engines strip the code from a document before determining where it will rank. They aren't looking at your code at all at that point.

Yes if your code is particularly bad it can put up barriers to getting a site indexed, but bad code is a long way from valid code.

For proof just do some searches and count how many of the top 10 results validate. Or check the search engines themselves and see how many of them validate.

I wish search engines did give more weight to valid code, but they don't other than engines specifically created to deal with accessibility like Google's Accessible Search. In that specific engine valid pages will rank better than in the general engine.

But again the general engine doesn't care at all if your pages are valid. There are still good reasons to validate your sites, but seo is not one of them at the moment.

Originally Posted by vangogh

travelagent, Matt is completely right. I think writing valid code is a good idea too and I do what I can to make every site I build validate both for basic standards and for accessibility.

But it will have absolutely no effect on seo. Search engines strip the code from a document before determining where it will rank. They aren't looking at your code at all at that point.

I know he's right and I agree valid code doesn't have any affect on SEO, and I know all about how search engines strip alot of things to determine where to place it -- just wanted to see if I could get a good argument from Matt...*grin*...

Funny. Sorry if I blew your cover.

I sort of like the way it is right now.

SE indexing should be content-centric, but there should be a cut-off point when the coding is so bad that it compromises the delivery of the content. Incidentally, that's sort-of how things work now.