100% valid XHTML

**layoutsmachine** · 03-25-2007, 06:41 AM

Does it help in getting your site's position up? Is it worth the time you spend validating your site's code according to the W3C standard? Does it help in getting you a good PR or higher ranking? Please advice.

**travelagent** · 10:06 AM

John - those are good questions, and you'll get a garden-variety of answers. You'll notice that I'm probably the fussiest person here regarding valid code; this comes from years of programming, because I can't stand errors and sloppy code.

Looking at the 109 code warnings you have, I can offer you this advice:

1. Your title is too long - shorten it to no more than 7 words, and place it after the "<head>" tag.

2. Your description is also too long - make this a short sentence in 15 words of less DESCRIBING your site's content.

3. Your keywords - shorten these also to no more than 15; they need to be RELEVANT to the CONTENT of your site.

4. Since you're using XHTML, all of your tags need a space with a trailing slash to validate like this - < />

5. All of your images must have an "alt description" for the visually impaired.

6. Lastly; strive to obtain IBL's (In-Bound-Links) - these will assist in a higher position, along with fresh content.

**stOx** · 03-25-2007, 10:30 AM

You should definately try to have valid markup, But do it for your users. Search engines don't care about code, They don't render pages, Search engines care about information.

PR is result of backlinks and backlinks alone though. The contents of the page has zero effect on it.

**ADAM Web Design** · 01:12 PM

That's not necessarily true, st0x. Organic traffic is gained from sites that are well-built and provide something to the user that's of benefit. An important part of that complete breakfast is quality code. I've even seen certain directory sites that make valid code a requirement, and a few go so far as to require XHTML.

In other words, it works on a much higher level than most so-called experts give it credit for.

Mind you, whether the SEO benefits exist or not isn't the important issue. The important issue is the user benefit...clean code takes less time to download and doesn't create anywhere near as many browser issues.

**stOx** · 03-25-2007, 02:38 PM

It's important that the page displays correctly, But it doesn't have to be validated to do that. Generally validation is something webmaters do for themselves.

Search engines don't care about it and users only ask that the page displays as it's supposed to.

**ForrestCroce** · 03-25-2007, 06:02 PM

A few people have told me the amount of content on a page should outweigh the markup needed to display it. Any truth to that, from a search engine perspective? These pages are probably useless for a normal person, most of the time ( except, say, a table of contents? ) but they might look like spam keyword pages. I have a feeling the advice is several years old, but it still might hint at how the search bots think of x/html code?

**stOx** · 03-25-2007, 06:46 PM

Quote:

A few people have told me the amount of content on a page should outweigh the markup needed to display it. Any truth to that, from a search engine perspective?

Theres no truth to that. I don't see what purpose it would serve for SEs to use that in thier algo.

**ForrestCroce** · 03-26-2007, 01:07 AM

In theory it could help them filter out "landing pages" ( I think that's the term anyway ) that have no real content, just a very little bit of text that's mostly keywords to push their density up. But the engines could filter this out by just looking at the content and ignoring the markup...

I'm going back over my site and improving all of the code, getting rid of tables and fonts, closing all my tags ( <img src="x" /> ) and so on. But I'm not expecting any search engine benefit from it. I'm hoping the pages will render a little more consistently across browsers, a little bit faster, and be easier to update in the future when the next big change comes, instead of for SEO.

**layoutsmachine** · 03-26-2007, 05:22 AM

WOW! Thank you travelagent for personally checking into my site and giving me a Free SEO report. Thank you, st0x, Adam, forrestcroce. Those are really helpful answers. Many of my confusions are cleared now. I used to think it may help me get a higher search engine position but I was wrong.

What I have learned from this thread so far, I conclude, that 100% validating X/HTML Document means your page will be rendered by the browsers easily and that it has no search engine benefits. My site is cross browser platform and it displays correctly in all browsers and I am pretty happy with the download time. So I don't have to validate it.

Then to really sum it up in simple words what helps me get a higher search engine position? If you would answer High PR Inbound links, frequently updated contents? Does it only depend upon these? Or there are also other factors? If yes, what are they? And also is search engine position affected by the number of outbound links as in a link exchange scenario with a relevant site?

I will really appreciate if my above mentioned confusions are cleared as well. Not only me but I'm sure there are also lot of other people who are confused about it. So you are not only helping me, you are helping a LOT of people. Thank you for your time and answers in advance.

**stOx** · 03-26-2007, 10:28 AM

Ultimately backlinks from authority sites will help your position best.
It doesn't matter about PR or if the site linking to you is related (though links from a related site will help you get targeted traffic).

Outbound link generally have no effect on your position, Unless you are linking to poor quality sites, Google may see this as spammy, But even then they are more likely to give that link little weight rather than penalize you for linking to the site.

**layoutsmachine** · 03-28-2007, 08:41 AM

Thanks alot St0x, What do you consider as poor quality sits? the ones with low pr, bad content.. ??

**bzimage** · 03-28-2007, 08:54 AM

LOW PR means nothing really, a poor site is bad content or a site which gets fake traffic to make it look big

**chrishirst** · 03-28-2007, 09:24 AM

Quote:

a poor site is bad content or a site which gets fake traffic to make it look big

Not from a SEs point of view

**bzimage** · 03-28-2007, 09:28 AM

Were talking common sense here though Chrishrist

atleast I was

**chrishirst** · 03-28-2007, 09:46 AM

How would you know it gets fake traffic ?? How would a SE "know"

Having "bad" content isn't neccessarily a criteria for quality, depending of course on how you define "bad"

Sweeping generalisations are how myths start and other people are then confused on how to decide on a course of action

**travelagent** · 03-28-2007, 09:47 AM

[quote=layoutsmachine]WOW! Thank you travelagent for personally checking into my site and giving me a Free SEO report. Thank you, st0x, Adam, forrestcroce. Those are really helpful answers. Many of my confusions are cleared now. I used to think it may help me get a higher search engine position but I was wrong.

So I don't have to validate it.[/quote]You're welcome, but you're missing the point -- you really should validate your site; that's a part of your confusion.

**bzimage** · 03-28-2007, 09:55 AM

I can see where you are coming from chrishirst and I agree