Comments on: W3C Validation for SEO – Myth and Reality

By: Pierre Loubert

Pierre Loubert — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:41:27 +0000

I don’t understand why everyone excludes all the other search engins from consideration. Google may be number one, but there are OTHER search tools out there (Yahoo for instance amongst others). This attitude of treating Google as is it was the ONLY valid search tool out there is the equivalent of coding exclusively for one browser and ignoring all the others.

If you’re at all professional, you adhere to standards and make sure your work is solid on all platforms, all browsers. Thus it seems only logical that if you’re a SEO professional you optimise to get decent results for all search engins and all robots.

By: w3cvalidation

w3cvalidation — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 17:17:55 +0000

Nice information, I really appreciate the way you presented.

By: w3cvalidation

w3cvalidation — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 12:17:55 +0000

Nice information, I really appreciate the way you presented.

By: Tim O'Keefe on W3C

Tim O'Keefe on W3C — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 23:19:39 +0000

It is nice to have perfect code but not necessary as the author says. It is the declaration that tells Google it is up to date and that implies that the page will work in the browser. Whether it does or not does not matter. However the user experience can be so bad you will want to have good code anyway.

By: Alan Bleiweiss

Alan Bleiweiss — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:22:08 +0000

Rafael,

Your experience further proves that “clean code” matters, not validation.

Alan

By: Rafael Montilla

Rafael Montilla — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:17:29 +0000

The W3C compliance is a SEO factor. I had a client in Mexico that his Website’s PHP code was terrible, We chaged everything, We built the Website from 0 but we kept the same Urls, same day we chaged the code, his visits jumped 500% and staed there. after I had some problem with one his manager and we stop working with them, after they changed back to the old code now they have very few visits.
This proved me that the clean code does matter.

By: Casse

Casse — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 18:27:11 +0000

You’re forgiven.

…this time :)

By: Alan Bleiweiss

Alan Bleiweiss — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:48:02 +0000

Uh, that should, of course, have said “Casse”, not “Cassie” but then I’m not all that swift on the uptake. So please, Casse, forgive me for that.

By: Alan Bleiweiss

Alan Bleiweiss — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:47:12 +0000

Cassie,

OMG yes! CSS used instead of H1 tags, CSS based links where the URL is even in the off-page style sheet – two of the most common examples I deal with a LOT!

By: Alan Bleiweiss

Alan Bleiweiss — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:23:26 +0000

Brett,

If you feel the need to be that micro-focused it’s perfectly valid for you to do so. All of this comes down to risk/reward decisions at every step.