W3C Standards Compliant
I firmly believe in making all the web pages W3C Standards Compliant. I have read in many place though that it makes no difference to your search engine rankings whether or not you website complies to these standards. I on the other hand am a little bit of a perfectionist and also think that it does make a difference in rankings.
I have noticed that with every new site that I have launched that has been W3C Standards Compliant and the CSS file also validates, that it has quickly received a high PR from Google (PR4 or PR5).
Making sure that your site passes the standards test is something that I recommend that you do from the beginning. If you leave it to the end then there may be too much to change and you will end up getting confused and frustrated. As you develop the pages, keep check to see that your page passes.
In my books, all sites that display the Valid XHTML link or image are well constructed and will potentially rank higher than others (as long as the sites has actually validated)! Does your site validate? Why not start with making your site
Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional as it a more basic validation. There are a number of different Doctypes that can be used when creating pages, but you can read all about it on the W3C site.
The validator can process documents written in most markup languages. Supported document types include the HTML (through HTML 4.01) and XHTML (1.0 and 1.1) family, MathML, SMIL and SVG (1.0 and 1.1, including the mobile profiles). The Markup Validator can also validate Web documents written with an SGML or XML DTD, provided they use a proper document type declaration which is stated in the head of the page.
Seriously, if you make sure that each page validates and you have some good high ranked links into your site, you are on the right track to being ranked high yourself.
June 30th, 2006 at 11:28 pm
I have also heard of a couple of sites not working on MACs, well to be more precise… a form would not work. It turned out that the page was totally NOT W3C compliant and once it was corrected the form worked properly on the MAC.
July 1st, 2006 at 1:41 am
Just one little thing that I thought was funny about this post…you said you are a bit of a perfectionist, must not refer to spelling, or is weither the correct spelling?lol…I do that all the time…that is forget to check spelling before I post…thanks for the advice, I have been working on a home improvement portal, and it has not been picked up by google, but the site directory has been picked up. Perhaps we should go through it and make sure it meets the standards.
I was speaking with a collegue, and she said she has never come across a site that meets all of the standars.
July 1st, 2006 at 11:52 am
Haha, thanks for the pointer… Yes that is a bad habit of mine too (not proof reading a post), I corrected it thanks! It is a good thing that your standars will forgive me for this… lol!
What do you mean by “never come across a site that meets all of the standars”? Occasionally, a page or two may break these guidelines, but I recon if you can keep 99% of your site standards compliant, you will do well. And it is possible to keep your site compliant, even a big directory!
June 22nd, 2007 at 7:54 am
You state “I have noticed that with every new site that I have launched that has been W3C Standards Compliant and the CSS file also validates, that it has quickly received a high PR from Google (PR4 or PR5)”.
I would think the PR4 or PR5 would be more a function of inbound links from other high PR sites.
Please do not think I am saying valid HTML and CSS is not important because it is.
June 26th, 2007 at 1:11 am
Yeah, I totally agree with you! PR is basically calculated on inbound links.