Drupal India : Drupal Theme Design, Development, Consulting, Hosting, SEO and Support

W3C validated xHTML and css is one of the most suggested SEO tip nowadays. But why to go an extra step to make the site comply with the W3c standards when the code seems to be just fine? If you want your site to be professional, accessible and rank higher in search engines, you need a compliant site.

Technically speaking, HTML is the language which is read by browsers to display the site. The site may be developed using any programming language like PHP, ASP etc, but the output sent to the browser is always HTML. Moreover, the search engine crawlers view the code to index your website rather than accessing the front end design. So, if your code has errors, the search engine crawler may not be able to read the code properly or completely. If there are errors they may miss essential parts of your content critical for the search engine results.

So, the W3C compliance is an important part of quality website development. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the authority which sets the standards for xHTML and css. Their website provides the complete standard as well as online validator to check the code for any errors.

The main reasons for validating the site are:

1. Future compliance: The non compliant code not according to the web standards may work fine today. But there is no guarantee that it will work the same in future. Thus validation is one of the simplest ways to ensure that the website will be compatible with the future Web platforms and will not become useless to be redone.
2. Easy of Maintenance: As the coding standards have been set and followed globally, the site code will be understood in the same way by various programmers. This way the maintenance becomes easy even if a different programmer is maintaining the site.
3. Professional vs novice: The compliant code sets apart a professional programmer from a novice. This not only shows that the programmer is professional with experience but also that he has an eye for accessibility.
4. Consistency across various platforms: Using a compliant markup & stylesheets will ensure that the web pages will be accessible and consistent across various platforms & user agents or browsers, whether a PC, palmtop or mobile.

In todays time when the internet is flooded with websites and content, the cost of one click has gone higher. So, its very important that the website code is compliant and cross browser compatible.

For online w3C HTML validator
For online W3C CSS Validator