Comments on: Is W3C Compliance Important For SEO?

By: Steven Bradley

Steven Bradley — Sat, 12 May 2007 00:44:17 +0000

That’s true about the inbound links. There are geeks among us who might want to look at your code before linking to you. If you’re code isn’t validating no link.

I think at some point the accessible search will make its way into the general algorithm too. I’m not sure I agree the spammers are poor coders though. The more obvious ones are, but some of the most profitable spammers are also some of the best coders. It’s what makes them so profitable.

I think the accessible search will eventually find its way in once the U.S. decides it should be taken more seriously. I think we’ll eventually see a certain amount of legal requirements to make a site accessible.

I also think valid code is an indicator of quality. I can understand that search engines care about content first, but I think sites that take the little bit of extra time to meet accessibility compliance are also the sites that have put a little more into the quality of their content as well. Sooner or later search engines will make that connection too.

By: SEFL

SEFL — Fri, 11 May 2007 14:17:16 +0000

This is one of those cases where there are actually benefits, but they’re a little harder to see.

For example, the dam situation created by poor code. Valid code = no dams = better for SEO than poor code = benefits.

What also needs to be considered in the equation (and never is) is the possibility of organic traffic and inbound links that occur as the result of a combination of a well-coded site and unique content. Both of these elements will need to be in place (along with design, of course) in order to maximize these types of links.

You also touched on the Accessible Search. My personal belief is that it’s only a matter of time before accessibility becomes part of the regular algorithm simply because most spammers are poor coders and it would provide an indirect means of algorithmically reducing spam. It may not be here yet, but it’s coming (at least from Big G’s standpoint.)

By: Steven Bradley

Steven Bradley — Tue, 08 May 2007 15:08:33 +0000

Absolutely. And once you go through all the typos and other obvious things I find so many of the validation errors are gone as well. One error in the code can often lead to dozens of validation errors in the report, especially if the error is a closing tag.

By: Forrest

Forrest — Tue, 08 May 2007 15:06:04 +0000

I’ve noticed the same thing about validation errors generally predicting which pages are going to work on some browsers and not others. You need to go a little bit further if you’re using png files, but for simple mistakes ( like [script src="x" /] or [?a] instead of [/a] ) it’s much, much easier to learn as soon as possible that you made a typo that needs to be fixed. The missing alt attribute report is as handy as it is important, too.