W3C Validation: How Important is This to Ranking
-
Hi,
I'm currently working with a developer who is trying to tell me that validation errors and warnings are of little to no importance in a website's SERP.
In the past, whenever I've had a site that was experiencing problems ranking for a keyword terms, this was one of the first places we'd look.
Is this still a relatively important component in getting a site to rank?
-
Absolutely! I will dig into this tonight and give you my honest feedback. Something I did notice that I would make a top priority is the load time of the page/site.
Upon opening the page, I noticed it took a quite a bit to load. After running through Pingdom & Page Speed Insights (links below), I'd make the load time fixes a top priority for your developer.
I would jump all over these first and foremost but I will look through the html errors tonight and get back to you!
-
Bryan,
I'm going to give you an example of one of the site pages after I run it through W3C validator. Would you mind having a look at it and telling me how highly I should prioritize fixing these issues?
The developer I'm working with on this site is telling me that these issues are a very low priority, but as I'm seeing throughout the threads, his lack of interest in repairing these issues is of some concern to me.
-
Exactly…. Google is the first one that comes to mind!
-
What Egol said is quite true...this has been debated for years....but those of us who don't care about the validations rank our own or our clients sites quite nicely.
Oh sidebar - you'd be so surprised to learn what kind of HUGE well known sites won't validate either....
-
Man... That's what I'm talking about George!!
-
Indeed! I'd be more concerned as a developer that there are glitches even if it won't affect SEO. Bad business
-
I would worry more about Google guidelines and best practices rather than wasting time on W3C validation.
-
A developer who tells you "W3C validation isn't important" is like a house builder telling you "Those small cracks in the walls are nothing to worry about"
George
-
I will totally agree with EGOL's idea. If the website speed time is fine you don't really have to go for all the non important code ethics and everything.
-
Seconding EGOL's statement, for the most part.
Years ago, The Matt Cutts stated W3C valid code wasn't a ranking factor. There's been a bit of debate over the years, but there still isn't much evidence to support W3C validation itself as a ranking factor. So it's something you probably can put on the back burner for more pressing concerns.
Honestly, sometimes errors are flagged simply because a comment or two are a little wonky. But that won't really inhibit how competitive a site is. If the site has 'quite a few' errors and warnings, that could potentially decrease site speed. Site speed is a ranking factor.
I suppose my best answer is; "No, it's not a ranking factor itself. Though there's some potential for poor coding to harm something that is a ranking factor."
-
W3C Validation: How Important is This to Ranking?
It depends who you ask.
If you ask one of the W3C evangelists they will tell you that you will never get good rankings without it and that google will penalize your website and not allow it to be seen in certain countries.
If you ask people who really know about this stuff they will tell you that if your site renders well in most browsers you will do fine in search.
-
Hello
While there are good reasons to validate your code, it does not directly affect your rankings. Matt Cutts talks about this in a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPBACTS-tyg
Validation does give insight into your development needs and will help you to improve user experience. However broken code won't take away from good content and that is primarily what search engines are looking for.
-
Hey luckybluebox!
IMO, this is rather important aspect of proper development and we make sure every site we work on is W3C compliant. These are typically easy fixes and should always be cleaned up.
Check out this youtube video from Google Webmasters channel. They say it is NOT a ranking factor but I would always suggest keeping things tidy
Hope this helps you out!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XlKn6I9rSc
-
Hey ya! You can find a great disccusion right here www.searchenginejournal.com/w3c-validation-for-seo-myth-and-reality/18566/
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Website have Caching/Indexing / Ranking Issue
Hi, My Website (https://www.v3cars.com) is not cached or indexed on regular basic from last 15 days. before this it was cached or indexed on regular basic. We are uploading fresh content on daily basic. Currently my new content is not ranked anywhere in Google even after cached or indexed. Please help and suggest. Sandeep - Love to Cars
Algorithm Updates | | onlinesandeep0 -
Linking from high ranking sub domain pages to less ranking main domain pages to benefit latter
Hi all, We have our product guide pages on sub domain which are years old, so have some backlinks and high ranking for the beand related queries. Now we created new guide pages on our main website and we want these new pages to rank top beating the old pages from sub domain. Again we can't deindex or rel canonical to solve the issue as there are some part of users still using the old pages. We are planning to give a link from every old page of sub domain to same new page on main domain. Will this linking increases the authority of new pages technically and helps in ranking better? Like we give a link to "Moz guide 1" page to "Moz guide 2" page to rank latter better. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Do keyword target landing pages increase rankings?
Let's say we create landing pages for targeted keywords in our niche. So like we have landing pages optimised for 80% of the top keywords with decent search volume. If these pages started ranking at first page or around; will this scenario improves the ranking of website? Right now, only few of our top pages are ranking good. Planning to create more of such.
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Bad Dates in SERPs, YouTube & Rankings (Nov. 10-18)
We've seen a lot of reports, including Q&A questions, of sites showing bad dates in Google SERPs. I've verified this bug in the wild. There are also reports of bad dates being caused by YouTube embeds, with Google taking the video date instead of the page date. I can also confirm this is happening, although I don't know if it accounts for all of the bad dates. Some people are reporting that these bad dates showing up corresponded with ranking drops. Usually, I would treat that as a coincidence (Google could easily launch an update and have a glitch on the same day), but in some of the reported cases, removing YouTube embeds led to ranking recovery soon after. I can't verify this, but I can't disregard it. There seem to be multiple reports of this recovery. I'm in communication with a Google rep, and they are unaware of any direct connection between a bad date and ranking (such as some kind of QDF effect). I've passed along some data, and they are investigating, but there may have been multiple updates in play that are making for noisy data (even for Google). There did seem to be heavy algorithm flux on November 10th and 18th, with some people speculating the latter spike was a reversal of the former. I have no evidence to support this, but MozCast data and chatter do seem to support both spikes. If you've been affected by this problem and the ranking drops are severe, it's worth temporarily removing YouTube embeds (if feasible). Replace them with direct links (or maybe a linked thumbnail) and have Google re-fetch the page. I can't guarantee it will work, but the risks are low. It's easy to restore the embed. Update (11/22) - Gary Illyes is saying on Twitter that the date problems have been fixed. If you see the proper dates cached, but have not seen rankings recover, then these may be unrelated events.
Algorithm Updates | | Dr-Pete2 -
Issue with Category Ranking on Page 1 vs. Homepage Ranking on Page 2
A client has a high-volume keyword that is rendering different results, whether it is on page one or page two of Google SERPs. If the keyword is on page one, ONLY the category page is ranking. When the keyword bumps off to page two, BOTH the category AND the homepage are ranking. This is happening on our IP and theirs, incognito and personalized searches. This has been happening since February. Any thought/insights would be greatly appreciated, thank you!!!!
Algorithm Updates | | accpar0 -
Local search ranking tips needed
Hi there, I've been working on my clients website for a while now. About a month ago I created him a local business listing in Google. I was wondering if there are any new tips to get his business up the rankings in local search? I've researched and only really found information relevant to the old way Google displayed local search.
Algorithm Updates | | SeoSheikh0 -
Poor rankings in Bing/Yahoo
Hello, A site I'm working on ranks well in Google, but does poorly in Bing/Yahoo. Is there anything I should look at? Thanks,
Algorithm Updates | | PLP0 -
If you rank first organically for a keyword, will you rank first for variations?
Hi everyone, Hoping that someone will be able to answer this question for us. If we rank first organically for a keyword, are we safe to assume that we'll rank first (or close to it) for variations of that keyword as well? E.g. If we rank first easily for "Hamilton Island", can we safely assume that we will rank well organically for close variations of that keyword such as "Hamilton Islands", "Hamiltonisland", "Hamilton Island Hotel" due to the fact that "Hamilton Island" is in those keywords? We're deciding which keywords to monitor in SEOmoz and we don't want to waste keywords on very similar terms if we don't have to. Really appreciate any responses! Cheers.
Algorithm Updates | | HamiltonIsland0