W3C validation - How important is this ?

[djdavejones]

How important is it to be W3C compliant? I just ran a check on my usb site and it reported 14 errors, most of which come from the cms adding an "/" to the end of a bracket before it is closed.

If I remove these, then the cms just seems to add them back anyway.

Will these kind of problems it effect my SERP rankings in any way ? Does Google take it into consideration if the site it is looking at is W3 compliant?

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Cheers

 

[Birmingham]

well one of your errors is having no "action" on your enquiry form. have you tested that it even works? maybe on some browsers it won't work.

the other errors are not major, but cleaning up your markup to be valid XHTML will definitely improve accessibility across various browsers and consequentially will also improve your rankings at least a little in yahoo and microsoft search engines because they appreciate accessibility derived from compliance with w3c standards

notice, though, google.com Failed validation, 63 Errors ...because Google pay attention to accessibility even more sharply than W3C do

 

[LianneF]

Birmingham
How can you see that google.com sees 63 errors?
Regards
Lianne

 

[DotNetWebs]

Birmingham
How can you see that google.com sees 63 errors?
Regards
Lianne

Try this:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=w...(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0

Just change the address to check any other site.

Regards

Dotty

 

[OldWelshGuy]

If the code is clean and it renders in most browsers then it will be ok. W3C AII etc are fine and dandy, but for PURE SEO resons they don't make a difference. BAD code OTOH can choke spiders and cause all sorts of issues.