SEO Correlation Between Code and Search Engine Rankings
-
I posted this on my blog and wanted to get everyones opinion on this (http://palatnikfactor.com/2011/06/07/seo-correlation-between-code-and-search-engine-rankings/)
I’m always looking to see what top ranking websites may be doing to get the rankings they do. One of the tasks of any SEO I guess is to really analyze competitors, right?
I want to really stress that what I am writing here is completely opinion based and have not (due to time) validated this correlation enough but would like to get the discussion started. Nevertheless, I did enough research to see that there may be a correlation between code validation and top ranking websites, at least for certain queries where the number of real big players/brands is limited or non-existent.
So, what do I mean? http://validator.w3.org/ validates code on websites. This tool shows you errors and warnings that may be making it harder for search engines to crawl your website. Looking at top competitors for certain niches, I was surprised to find that top sites had very few errors compared to 2+ page rankings. That’s not to say that all the sites on the first page had fewer errors (cleaner code) than websites in the 2<sup>nd</sup> page plus. However, again, top ranking websites for keywords that I was looking at had cleaner code which may have a correlation in regards to organic rankings.
What’s your take? Does this have any effect in regards to SEO?
-
I have a lot of thoughts on this subject. If I was to make a blog entry on this topic, it would span multiple pages or have to be broken down into sub-topics.
I do think there is a correlation between good code and search engine rankings. I do not think there is a correlation between a w3c validated page and search engine rankings. The validator is not current enough, nor flexible enough, to accommodate the real world situations which websites encounter.
Example A: HTML 5 is recognized by all major browsers. W3C validation of HTML 5 is still experimental. A specific example that applies to SEO is the canonical tag. According the the W3C validation site, the canonical tag is not currently valid. Take a snippet of HTML5 code which passes validation, add a canonical meta tag to the header, and the code will no longer pass validation. This is a direct conflict between best practices and validation.
Example B: The world's most popular web page, google.com, does not pass validation. Matt Cutts discussed the topic. In short, they had a choice between providing code which validated, or code which worked. They chose to go with the working code.
Example The standard facebook widget code, youtube video code, and other popular code does not pass validation.
Whenever I design a website, I check the code in the validator to look for errors. Initially, I will find numerous errors related to code outside of my control such as social sharing widgets or youtube videos. Once I remove that code, the page often validates. I have researched the issue and it is possible to modify the facebook code or youtube code so that it still functions and passes validation. Doing so requires extra effort, it provides absolutely zero benefit other then saying "hey, I pass validation", and there are often drawbacks such as having to add extra javascript to your site which can otherwise be viewed as unnecessary code.
-
It's totally conjecture, but I would say that code validation doesn't have any bearing on ranking. Some of my early websites that I created that are not validated are ranking pretty well. (But then...I haven't checked whether my competitors are validated at all.)
Here's my theory...if a site is validated it means that some quality work has been put into it. So, if someone put that kind of quality work into the coding, they likely have put good quality work into the SEO and every other aspect of the site.
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
-
Google Image Search - Is there a way to influence the related icons at the top of the image search results?
Google recently added related icons at the top of the image search results page. Some of the icons may be unrelated to the search. Are there any best practices to influence what is positioned in the related image icons section? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JaredBroussard1 -
SEO page descriptions on mobile - how to hide while preserving the juice for SEO?
Hi everybody, On our pages we have crafted good text paragraphs for SEO purposes. On desktop everything is fine but on mobile the paragraph of text pushes the main content really low on the page. Is there a way of hiding the text while preserving the SEO juices and not getting penalised by Google for spamming techniques? I'd appreciate any recommendations on how to deal with this. Thanks very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Firebox0 -
Does having a different sub domain for your Landing Page and Blog affect your overall SEO benefits and Ranking?
We have a domain www.spintadigital.com that is hosted with dreamhost and we also have a seperate subdomain blog.spintadigital.com which is hosted in the Ghost platform and we are also using Unbounce landing pages with the sub domain get.spintadigital.com. I wanted to know whether having subdomain like this would affect the traffic metric and ineffect affect the SEO and Rankings of our site. I think it does not affect the increase in domain authority, but in places like similar web i get different traffic metrics for the different domains. As far as i can see in many of the metrics these are considered as seperate websites. We are currently concentrating more on our blogs and wanted to make sure that it does help in the overall domain. We do not have the bandwidth to promote three different websites, and hence need the community's help to understand what is the best option to take this forward.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vinodh-spintadigital0 -
Intro to programming/coding for seo
Hello, I am currently a SEO and am looking for an Intro to programming/coding course to help me implement various technical SEO tasks for my clients and the business-as the programming dept will not help me, as they do not see the value of SEO. Could someone pls recommend an online course that would introduce me to basic concepts and also specifically, the information that would help me to enhance our SEO? I would also like to better understand APIs. Thanks so much in advance for your help! Lauren
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lfrazer1 -
What's the best possible URL structure for a local search engine?
Hi Mozzers, I'm working at AskMe.com which is a local search engine in India i.e if you're standing somewhere & looking for the pizza joints nearby, we pick your current location and share the list of pizza outlets nearby along with ratings, reviews etc. about these outlets. Right now, our URL structure looks like www.askme.com/delhi/pizza-outlets for the city specific category pages (here, "Delhi" is the city name and "Pizza Outlets" is the category) and www.askme.com/delhi/pizza-outlets/in/saket for a category page in a particular area (here "Saket") in a city. The URL looks a little different if you're searching for something which is not a category (or not mapped to a category, in which case we 301 redirect you to the category page), it looks like www.askme.com/delhi/search/pizza-huts/in/saket if you're searching for pizza huts in Saket, Delhi as "pizza huts" is neither a category nor its mapped to any category. We're also dealing in ads & deals along with our very own e-commerce brand AskMeBazaar.com to make the better user experience and one stop shop for our customers. Now, we're working on URL restructure project and my question to you all SEO rockstars is, what can be the best possible URL structure we can have? Assume, we have kick-ass developers who can manage any given URL structure at backend.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | _nitman0 -
Do Local Search Efforts (Citations, NAP, Reviews) have an impact on traditional organic search listings (without the A, B, C mapping icons), but rather the traditional listings?
Are citations, NAP, Reviews, and other local search efforts impact traditional SEO listings? Can one elaborate?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JQC0 -
SEO for a plumber?
Hello, How does a small, local business win at SEO (without abusing directories, articles, and paid links)? It seems that everyone is saying "create unique content", but that just doesn't seem realistic for a small plumber in a big metro area. One might suggest coming up with helpful articles about plumbing tips, etc., but there are thousands of spun articles on article directories already. On page optimization is in place, we are listed in the main directories, we've asked the people we know to link to us, and we are engaged in social media. What would you recommend next? Thanks, Will
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WillWatrous0