Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
The W3C Markup Validation Service - Good, Bad or Impartial?
-
Hi guys,
it seems that now days it is almost impossible to achieve 0 (Zero) Errors when testing a site via (The W3C Markup Validation Service - https://validator.w3.org). With analytic codes, pixels and all kind of tracking and social media scripts gunning it seems to be an unachievable task.
My questions to you fellow SEO'rs out there are 2:
1. How important and to what degree of effort do you go when you technically review a site and make the decision as to what needs to be fixed and what you shouldn't bother with.
2. How do you argue your corner when explaining to your clients that its impossible to active 100% validation.
*As a note i will say that i mostly refer to Wordpress driven sites.
would love ot hear your take.
Daniel.
-
I am my own client, so I can be as picky as a want, and I take care of the details that I feel are important.
I pay close attention to how the site is responding and rendering when I pretend that I am a visitor. I pay even more attention when a customer or visitor writes to me with a complaint. In my opinion, if the site is working great then all is good.
W3C validation seems to be of jugular importance to W3C evangelists. They will tell you that you will burn in Hell if you don't achieve it with flying colors. People who want to sell you their services will point at any fault that can be detected.
Practical people have a different opinion. I try to be as practical as possible.
-
I agree with Andy,
I use it as a guidance tool on any website i build. It serves a purpose, to check things are understood how they should be by a predetermined standard. But like any other automated tool it compares to set requirements that cannot always be met and cannot identify and ok these exceptions.
As long as you understand the error its pointing out and why its pointing it out, and know that despite this the code is rendering correctly and all outcomes are working as expected then there is no problem.
From an SEO stand point, aslong as google see's your site how you want it too i think it is a very very minor factor. Hell all of google returns errors of some variety.
-
Hi Yiannis,
I tend to add these in as an advisory to my clients because for the most part, and unless I see something specific, the results have absolutely no effect on SEO. If they wish to act on them, it is for their developers to handle.
I don't argue my corner really - never had to. I just tell them like it is - the site is rendering fine in everything and with no issues, so fix errors if you have the time and resources.
As I said, unless I spot something that is an actual problem, then it tends to just get bypassed.
-Andy
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
-
Product Schema Markup for All Products
Hi Team, Google search console used to allow you to use their structured data markup helperhttps://www.google.com/webmasters/markup-helper/u/0/ to markup multiple product pages at once that were similar. I do not see this feature anymore with the new search console. Does anyone have a recommendation for marking up multiple product pages without having to have schema markup firing in GTM for each product page?
Technical SEO | | agrier0 -
Query string parameters always bad for SEO?
I've recently put some query string parameters into links leading to a 'request a quote' form which auto-fill the 'product' field with the name of the product that is on the referring product page. E.g. Red Bicycle product page >>> Link to RFQ form contains '?productname=Red-Bicycle' >>>> form's product field's default value becomes 'Red-Bicycle' I know url parameters can lead to keyword cannibalisation and duplicate content, we use sub-domains for our language changer. BUT for something like this, am I potentially damaging our SEO? Appreciate I've not explained this very well. We're using Kentico by the way, so K# macros are a possibility (I use a simple one to fill the form's Default Field).
Technical SEO | | landport0 -
URL Structure On Site - Currently it's domain/product-name NOT domain/category/product name is this bad?
I have a eCommerce site and the site structure is domain/product-name rather than domain/product-category/product-name Do you think this will have a negative impact SEO Wise? I have seen that some of my individual product pages do get better rankings than my categories.
Technical SEO | | the-gate-films0 -
Good robots txt for magento
Dear Communtiy, I am trying to improve the SEO ratings for my website www.rijwielcashencarry.nl (magento). My next step will be implementing robots txt to exclude some crawling pages.
Technical SEO | | rijwielcashencarry040
Does anybody have a good magento robots txt for me? And what need i copy exactly? Thanks everybody! Greetings, Bob0 -
Are links in menus to external sites bad for SEO?
We're building a blog on a subdomain of the main site. The main site is on Shopify and the blog will be on wordpress. I'd like to keep the user experience as simple as possible so I'd like to make the blog look exactly like the main Shopify site. This means having a menu in the blog that duplicates the Shopify menu. So is it bad for SEO to have someone click on the 'about us' button in the blog subdomain (blog.mainsite.com) which takes you to the 'about us page' on the main shopify website (mainsite.com)?
Technical SEO | | acs1110 -
Is it worth adding schema markup to articles?
I know things like location, pagination, breadcrumbs, video, products etc have value in using schema markup. What about things like articles though? Is it worth all the work involved in having the pages mark up automatically? How does this effect SEO, and is it worthwhile? Thanks, Spencer
Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
Are 404 Errors a bad thing?
Good Morning... I am trying to clean up my e-commerce site and i created a lot of new categories for my parts... I've made the old category pages (which have had their content removed) "hidden" to anyone who visits the site and starts browsing. The only way you could get to those "hidden" pages is either by knowing the URLS that I used to use or if for some reason one of them is spidering in Google. Since I'm trying to clean up the site and get rid of any duplicate content issues, would i be better served by adding those "hidden" pages that don't have much or any content to the Robots.txt file or should i just De-activate them so now even if you type the old URL you will get a 404 page... In this case, are 404 pages bad? You're typically not going to find those pages in the SERPS so the only way you'd land on these 404 pages is to know the old url i was using that has been disabled. Please let me know if you guys think i should be 404'ing them or adding them to Robots.txt Thanks
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
I can buy a domain from a competitor. Whats the best way to make good use of these links for my existing website
I can buy a domain from a competitor. Whats the best way to make good use of these links for my existing website
Technical SEO | | Archers0