W3C Compliance - Still a ranking factor in 2015?
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Hi All,
In regards to W3C Compliance, is this still an important ranking factor? Has anyone become compliant and seen a noticeable difference in rankings?
Cheers,
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Hi Jamie,
I was asked this question recently by a client and my response was that as long as your site can be crawled efficiently and read by Google having a w3c compliant site won't make a difference to rankings. I also pointed out to them that amazon.co.uk - has nearly 400 errors and over 100 warning when you run it through w3c validation tool but they do well in the SERPs!
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lolol @ Google knows it.
Cheers Matt I get what you mean, I was thinking maybe Google had a green flag system letting it know the site is compliant and giving it a boost. Seems as though it's just guidelines after all.
Have a good one bud.
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I agree with the other responses with a caveat. W3C compliance is not a ranking factor - except when it's a massive problem. If your site has 50 errors and 10 warnings, not a ranking factor. If you have 600 errors, it actually may affect your rankings - but I don't think it's "compliance" related as much as it is "your site sucks and Google knows it" related.
So a massive amount of errors may actually look like a ranking issue - but it's not a factor, I think.
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Cheers Robert, I haven't seen any evidence online either but I thought it worth asking.
Have a good one
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Hi Alick
Thanks for the info and video ill check it out now.
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Jamie,
Years ago everyone put W3C compliant on every website they seemed to produce. I have never seen it have an impact in rankings and would be interested to see if anyone has any reasonable evidence it did. So, I have to agree with Alick300 and suggest you follow that moz guide as it is a really good basis for SEO and ranking.
Best
Robert
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Hi Jamie,
Neither it was nor it is an important ranking factor. No I haven't seen any noticeable difference .
List of Important SEO ranking Factors @ http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors
I'm also sharing Matt Cutts video on this @ http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2297152/does-google-penalize-for-invalid-html-matt-cutts-says-no
Thanks
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