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 ranking flux that we cannot explain
Hello, SEO experts from around the world. We need your help; we have seen massive ranking flux across our website and others. We cannot explain what is causing this ranking flux. The content marketing is top quality, so we don’t know why we are moving from 25 to 50th on Google and sometimes even beyond that. Can any SEO experts explain why our agency is moving so much within Google’s rankings? We don’t know whether to make changes or possibly wait. Any help would be fantastic; thank you all.
Algorithm Updates | | sarahwalsh0 -
Fresh backlinks vs old backlinks: A solid ranking factor?
Hi Moz community, Backlinks being a major ranking factor, do they must be very recent or fresh to make a ranking difference compared to the backlinks which are years old? We know usually fresh content ranks well, but I wonder how much the fresh/recent backlinks impact in rankings. Do the years old backlinks from related and reputed website have same impact on rankings? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
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 -
Ranking drop after sub domain to sub directory migration. Usual?
Hi all, We had our help articles on sub-domain help.website.com. Then we moved it to sub directory website.com/help/. We expected ranking improvement of website.com as there is a wide saying of benefiting from sub domain to sub directory migration. We have noticed that ranking improvement of new sub directory pages (website.com/help/) but not for any main website pages (website.com). I presume that link juice from main website has benefited new sub directory pages but main website lost ranking due to the page rank dilution. Do you agree? Any ideas? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Dates appear before home page description in the SERPs- HUGE drop in rankings
We have been on the first page of Google for a number of years for search terms including 'SEO Agency', 'SEO Agency London' etc. A few months ago we made some changes to the design of the home page (added a blog feed), and made changes to the website sitemap. Two days ago (two months after last site changes were made) we dropped subsantially in the SERPs for all home page keywords. Where we are found, a date appears before the description in the SERPs, dating February 2012 (which is when we launched the original website). The site has been through a revamp since then, yet it still shows 2012. This has been followed by a few additional strange things, including the sitelinks that Google is choosing to show (which including author bio pages showing in homepage site links), and googling our brand name no longer brings up sitelinks in the SERPs. The problem only affects the home page. All other pages are performing as standard. When Penguin 4.0 came out we saw a noted improvement in our SERP performance, and our backlinks are good and quality, largely from PR efforts. Of course, I would be interested in additional pairs of eyes on the back links to see if anyone thinks that I have missed anything! We have 3 of our senior SEOs working on trying to figure out what is going on and how to resolve it, but I would be very interested if anyone has any thoughts?
Algorithm Updates | | GoUp3 -
Is there a way to pull historical rankings for a keyword?
I have someone who's come to me and said that they have lost all of their organic keyword rankings. They did launch a site redesign a few months back so that could be a reason as to why. But after looking at the site, link profile, etc. It doesn't look like they could have been ranking for the terms they say they were. They have never implemented any SEO on their sites btw. I did not build this site and have not done any SEO, they are coming to me to solve the problem. I did notice in SEM rush that a couple months ago they were ranking organically for more terms (20 in July vs. 5 now), so they did lose some. Is there any way to see what terms they WERE ranking for?
Algorithm Updates | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Importance of Product Review Syndication?
Greetings everyone I have been tasked to do research on just how important it is to have product reviews syndicated with Google's (star rating found in Google Shopping). I am unable to find any research reports or studies on this nor any quantitative data on it's impact, beneficial or otherwise. If any of you folks have any first hand experiences, perhaps some before and after figures, that would be great. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | airnwater0