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.
W3C Validation: How Important is This to Ranking
-
Hi,
I'm currently working with a developer who is trying to tell me that validation errors and warnings are of little to no importance in a website's SERP.
In the past, whenever I've had a site that was experiencing problems ranking for a keyword terms, this was one of the first places we'd look.
Is this still a relatively important component in getting a site to rank?
-
Absolutely! I will dig into this tonight and give you my honest feedback. Something I did notice that I would make a top priority is the load time of the page/site.
Upon opening the page, I noticed it took a quite a bit to load. After running through Pingdom & Page Speed Insights (links below), I'd make the load time fixes a top priority for your developer.
I would jump all over these first and foremost but I will look through the html errors tonight and get back to you!
-
Bryan,
I'm going to give you an example of one of the site pages after I run it through W3C validator. Would you mind having a look at it and telling me how highly I should prioritize fixing these issues?
The developer I'm working with on this site is telling me that these issues are a very low priority, but as I'm seeing throughout the threads, his lack of interest in repairing these issues is of some concern to me.
-
Exactly…. Google is the first one that comes to mind!
-
What Egol said is quite true...this has been debated for years....but those of us who don't care about the validations rank our own or our clients sites quite nicely.
Oh sidebar - you'd be so surprised to learn what kind of HUGE well known sites won't validate either....
-
Man... That's what I'm talking about George!!
-
Indeed! I'd be more concerned as a developer that there are glitches even if it won't affect SEO. Bad business
-
I would worry more about Google guidelines and best practices rather than wasting time on W3C validation.
-
A developer who tells you "W3C validation isn't important" is like a house builder telling you "Those small cracks in the walls are nothing to worry about"
George
-
I will totally agree with EGOL's idea. If the website speed time is fine you don't really have to go for all the non important code ethics and everything.
-
Seconding EGOL's statement, for the most part.
Years ago, The Matt Cutts stated W3C valid code wasn't a ranking factor. There's been a bit of debate over the years, but there still isn't much evidence to support W3C validation itself as a ranking factor. So it's something you probably can put on the back burner for more pressing concerns.
Honestly, sometimes errors are flagged simply because a comment or two are a little wonky. But that won't really inhibit how competitive a site is. If the site has 'quite a few' errors and warnings, that could potentially decrease site speed. Site speed is a ranking factor.
I suppose my best answer is; "No, it's not a ranking factor itself. Though there's some potential for poor coding to harm something that is a ranking factor."
-
W3C Validation: How Important is This to Ranking?
It depends who you ask.
If you ask one of the W3C evangelists they will tell you that you will never get good rankings without it and that google will penalize your website and not allow it to be seen in certain countries.
If you ask people who really know about this stuff they will tell you that if your site renders well in most browsers you will do fine in search.
-
Hello
While there are good reasons to validate your code, it does not directly affect your rankings. Matt Cutts talks about this in a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPBACTS-tyg
Validation does give insight into your development needs and will help you to improve user experience. However broken code won't take away from good content and that is primarily what search engines are looking for.
-
Hey luckybluebox!
IMO, this is rather important aspect of proper development and we make sure every site we work on is W3C compliant. These are typically easy fixes and should always be cleaned up.
Check out this youtube video from Google Webmasters channel. They say it is NOT a ranking factor but I would always suggest keeping things tidy
Hope this helps you out!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XlKn6I9rSc
-
Hey ya! You can find a great disccusion right here www.searchenginejournal.com/w3c-validation-for-seo-myth-and-reality/18566/
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
-
Huge difference between GSC ranking and browser ranking for certain keywords: How to proceed?
Hi, There is a huge ranking difference between the GSC and browser for our primary keyword. As per GSC, our ranking is around 15 and when checking on the multiple different incognito browsers it's around 50. How to handle this? Which is the accurate one? Product expert from Google forums claim that what I see on browsers are the personalized results; but I tried on different browsers with different connections. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Are Meta-descriptions important for blogs?
I am tasked with optimizing an existing sites SEO. I have added meta's to all the menu pages, however they have blog section with over 700 posts. How important are meta descriptions when it comes to a websites blog? Do I need to take the time to go through 700+ blog posts and create unique meta descriptions for each one?
Algorithm Updates | | rburnett0 -
Safari and IE killing our mobile ranking
My client's website does fairly well on mobile in a Google Search. So one day, my client is in a staff meeting and everyone does on search on their phones. The client’s website is nowhere on the 1st three pages. I get a call asking why. I tell the client that Google has maybe as high as 90% market share on mobile. Of course, their phones have the factory installed Safari and IE. Client says lots of people don’t change the factory settings on mobile . Question: How do we rate higher on lesser search engines?
Algorithm Updates | | jgodwin0 -
Can 'Jump link'/'Anchor tag' urls rank in Google for keywords?
E.g. www.website.com/page/#keyword-anchor-text Where the part after the # is a section of the page you can jump to, and the title of that section is a secondary keyword you want the page to rank for?
Algorithm Updates | | rwat0 -
The importance of meta keywords?
Hello, Is adding meta keywords still worth doing nowadays? I have been reading and hearing some different opinions about it. For a ' beginner ' in this field it is hard to find a definite answer to this questions.. Thank you for reading(and answering) my question!
Algorithm Updates | | EPPD0 -
Ranking For Synonyms Without Creating Duplicate Content.
We have 2 keywords that are synonyms we really need to rank for as they are pretty much interchangeable terms. We will refer to the terms as Synonym A and Synonym B. Our site ranks very well for Synonym A but not for Synonym B. Both of these terms carry the same meaning, but the search results are very different. We actively optimize for Synonym A because it has the higher search volume of the 2 terms. We had hoped that Synonym B would get similar rankings due to the fact that the terms are so similar, but that did not pan out for us. We have lots of content that uses Synonym A predominantly and some that uses Synonym B. We know that good content around Synonym B would help, but we fear that it may be seen as duplicate if we create a piece that’s “Top 10 Synonym B” because we already have that piece for Synonym A. We also don’t want to make too many changes to our existing content in fear we may lose our great ranking for Synonym A. Has anyone run into this issue before, or does anyone have any ideas of things we can do to increase our position for Synonym B?
Algorithm Updates | | Fuel0 -
Low Domain Authority - Rank Well For Competitive Keywords
I have been following a competitor's link profile on OSE for over 8 months. Their linkbacks have remained the same (3 follow, 9 nofollow links), all from low-quality directory sites. However, my competitor continues to improve in rankings and is now #1 for competitive keyword searches. How is this possible? Is there a way to hide your link profile or links from OSE? Any tips are appreciated - Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | TheSEODR0 -
Rankings changing every couple of MINUTES in Google?
We've been experiencing some unusual behaviour in the Google.co.uk SERPs recently... Basically, the ranking of some of our websites for certain keywords appears to be changing by the minute. For example, doing a search for "our keyword" might show us at #20. Then a few minutes later, doing the same search shows us at #14, and then the same search a few minutes later shows us at #26, and then sometimes we're not ranked at all, etc etc. I know the algorithm changes a lot, but does it really change every couple of minutes? Has anyone else experienced this kind of behaviour in the SERPs? What could be causing it to happen?
Algorithm Updates | | d4online0