How important is w3c validation for mobile sites???
-
So mobile sites are all the rave, but how many are doing it correctly and with all the different options which is correct or the best?
For example I have a guy telling me that the mobile site must validate here http://validator.w3.org/mobile/ or here http://ready.mobi/launch.jsp?locale=en_EN
However I have run many so called mobile sites like nike (m.nike.com) and those built by dudamobiles and all dramatically fail the above tests!
Responsive is another key element of web design and the guys at twitter came up with bootstrap, so I ran these sites through the above validators and all have failed.
I take this site as an example from ilovebootstrap.com, please note this is not my site but was top of thelist on here.
Mobi Ready
2 / 5 - result poor mobile experience
Results from google pagespeed
Mobile 62 / 100
Desktop 83 / 100
So while it looks good on mobile devices it does not score well
If you look at the google site: http://www.howtogomo.com/en-gb/d/why-get-mo/
The case studies listed all fail the validation tests, so my question is is it worth getting our mobile sites validated and will this affect rankings?
-
Hi Andrew,
Passing or not W3C won't mean your site is mobile friendly or not, there are other, far more meaningful criteria and validations you should do. Foe example:
- Your site is correctly shown and accessible through the most popular devices used by your users. You can use Opera Mobile Emulator to test it.
- Your site loads fast in mobile devices (that usually have also more speed restrictions). You can use PageSpeed Insights to test it.
In dependance of what type of mobile site approach you have followed (parallel mobile web under a different URL structure, dynamic serving or responsive Web design) you also have good practices and additional recommendations that you should assess.
Please take a look at this Moz post where I shared the answers to the most common questions during a Mobile SEO process, you will likely find the answers to your questions there.
I hope this helps!
-
I would look at it the other way around., am I concerned about what it fails me for.
yes I would go with responsive design, bootstrap is a good for layout,
yes I would try to get a good score on page speed,
-
So you would stick with responsive design and work on making the site load as fast as possible and getting highest possible score on google page speed?
-
There is no direct benefit from w3 validation for SEO.
Having a functional, fast site has usability benefits. Google does factor engagement/usability into the search algorithm. For mobile sites, Google is more interested in how mobile users are redirected (if necessary) and if the page loads reasonably fast.
-
So if we looking at optimisation then Google Pagespeed is the only point we should worry about?
You don't think there is any SEO benefit from having a w3c valid mobile site?
-
don't bother with w3.org for the reasons you point out.
I don't try to pass validation for the sake of passing, If the validation has logic behind it that concerns me then I take note.
I use Microsoft Visual Studio code analysis(fxcop) for server side code for performance and reliability , I use the JSHint and Web essentials (css) for client side code, I use the Bing SEO API for SEO, all of these are built into Visual Studio, I also use the IIS Bing SEO Tools for a more detailed look at the SEO.
I just ran a site of mine though w3.org and they gave me 3 errors, all nonsense
for example
Line 5, Column 59: Bad value X-UA-Compatible for attribute http-equiv on element meta.This is the correct tag to tell Internet explorer how to render the page, if you listen to the w3.org, then you page will not render correctly in IE.
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
-
Multiple Sites for an Attorney Practicing Different Areas of Law
Hello, I'm trying to make sure I give a potential client the correct advice. This person is an attorney whose current site ranks well. The site deals solely with his traffic ticket defense practice. He's considering building a new site to highlight his personal injury practice but is unsure whether to build an altogether new site or redesign his current site in such a way that it includes his personal injury practice along side his traffic ticket defense practice. Obviously he doesn't want to lose his current rankings, but my concern is that he'll actually dilute his rankings somewhat with the multiple sites. Both practices have pretty different sets of keywords they would need to rank for, with pretty different difficulty levels. Any advice? Thanks.
Web Design | | lawfather2 -
Is there an issue if we show our old mobile site to Google & new site to users
Hi, We have our existing mobile site that contains interlinking in footer & content and new mobile site that does not have interlinking. We will show existing mobile site to google crawler & new mobile site to users. Will this be taken as black hat by Google. The mobile site & desktop site will have same url across devices & browsers. Regards
Web Design | | vivekrathore0 -
How important is it to update from a tabular lay-out to a div-layout?
Mozzers, As the title of this question describes I'm am wondering how important it is that your code has to be up to date for SEO and UX use. One of my sites was build in 2007 and updates in 2010 (new images / color) but my code hasn't changed that much over te years so the site still uses tables for lay-out purposes in stead of divs. Now how important is it to update this and how much risk will this have to my current rankings? For most of my main keywords I rank number 1 in Google (NL). I can't afford to lose those rankings but if an outdated code will get me into trouble I might have to update this anyway and then rather do it sooner then later. Any suggestions on this subject? regards Jarno
Web Design | | JarnoNijzing0 -
Web Hosting and CDN for Wordpress Site Load Speed - Suggestions Needed
We all know that website load speed is more important than ever. While I love the look and feel of parallax and Wordpress, I want to do everything I can to keep the load speed down. I see a lot of conflicting information regarding web hosting services, CDN services and other service (Cloudflare for example). I am looking to hear from those with their own experiences to let me know what they think is the ideal setup for a parallax Wordpress site is as far as which services to use, including: 1. Web Hosting
Web Design | | Gauge123
2. CDN
3. Any other service or product that would help to provide and extremely fast site load time. Thank you!0 -
Thoughts on our Agency Site
Hi all, We'd all welcome opinions on our digital agency site http://www.newbrandvision.com/. We are in the planning stage of launching a new site; and we'd welcome any UX or SEO thoughts. It's a strange one but our agency has been around since 2002, and we operate in the heart of London; however we don't rank anywhere near the first page for "digital agency in London" or any long-tail /semantics around this. We feel that it's pretty clear from search and when landing on the site what we are; but would welcome any general thoughts as to why we aren't ranked that highly. Much appreciated!
Web Design | | Tangent0 -
Going Mobile - Advice Requested
Hi, I run a website called tvfoodmaps.com. We currently have a desktop website and a mobile app (native apps). However the largest community of our users tend to use our desktop site on their mobile phones. Our bounce rate is about 12% higher for mobile devices than desktop users and our pages per visit drops by almost 50% from desktop to mobile. My hypothesis is that mobile users when presented with a "designed for desktop" site are more likely to leave since the navigation isn't as natural. I'm considering investing in either a responsive design for the site or a dedicated mobile site and wanted the communities input on what metrics I should be looking at to determine "is it worth it"? Or should I just stick with service the desktop version to the mobile users?
Web Design | | tvfoodmaps0 -
Anyone migrated a site from PHP into ASP? Anyone migrated into Sitecore?
We have a network of websites in Linux-based PHP and we may be switching them over to ASP.NET and using SiteCore CMS. Right now, we don't have a CMS. We would also be switching from using file extension www.site.com/file.php to no extensions www.site.com/file/ therefore altering our directory structure. We are aware of the potential impacts to traffic of the initial migration, but are now more curious about SiteCore CMS and SEO, performance and indexation/crawlability. Has anyone made this move before or considered making it? Can you offer any success stories, horror stories?
Web Design | | Eric_edvisors0 -
Site structure- category pages
Hi, I'm relatively new to SEO but have tried to apply all best practices to my site. However, I've hit a stumbling block when it comes to whether or not to index my category pages. http://istudyenglishonline.com/category/expressions-idioms/ General info: the site has been created with Wordpress and has a directory of English idioms. Each idiom is associated with one or more categories that it falls under (emotions, sports, food etc). Each category has its own page where the list of idioms will be. As each idiom often has more than one associated category, the same idiom will appear in different category pages, thus creating duplicate content. However, I have given each category page its own unique description. The issue is, when there are numerous idioms, the category page will have more than 1 page. I don't have the ability to create a unique description for each subsequent page of the main category. I know that the very model for some vertical search engines (such as indeed.com) is to create such landing pages and that the more "categories" that they have assigned to their job ads, in this case, the more pages created and the more pages indexed in Google. This seems to work very well for them. My question is, am I doing things right? Should I be doing anything to the subsequent category pages to avoid duplicate content? My plan was to have so many idioms associated with so many categories that I have a fair number of landing pages indexed in google, thus attacking the long tail keywords. However, I'm not sure if I am going the right way. Any advice would be much appreciated!
Web Design | | villarroel0