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Ryan, thanks so much for taking the time to answer, and so comprehensively too, I really appreciate it.

My client came around after I suggested that Getting quality backlinks to a website full of coding errors was like hanging a crystal chandelier in a toilet!! and that they where tying one of my hands behind my back by not sorting it out. Perhaps not the most expert answer but they got the point.

Thanks for some great information and a great answer all round.

I have a client who uses a template to build their websites (no problem with that) when I ran the site through w3c validator it threw up a number of errors, most of which where minor eg missing close tags and I suggested they fix them before I start their off site SEO campaigns.

When I spoke to their web designer about the issues I was told that some of the errors where "just how its done"  So if that's the case, but the validator still registers the error, do the SE spiders ignore them and move on, or does it penalize the site in some way?

Ryan, thanks so much for taking the time to answer, and so comprehensively too, I really appreciate it.

My client came around after I suggested that Getting quality backlinks to a website full of coding errors was like hanging a crystal chandelier in a toilet!! and that they where tying one of my hands behind my back by not sorting it out. Perhaps not the most expert answer but they got the point.

Thanks for some great information and a great answer all round.