How to comply with W3C Compliance and SEO?
The W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium and since 1994 the W3C has provided the guidelines by which websites and web pages should be structured and created. The rules they outline are based on the best practices and while websites don't have to comply to be viewed correctly in Internet Explorer, Firefox and other popular browsers that cater to incorrect design practices. There are a number of compelling reasons to ensure that you or your designer ensure that the W3C guidelines are followed and that your site is brought into compliance.
A number of less SEO-related though very compelling arguments for W3C-complaince. Some non-SEO reasons to take on this important step in the lifecycle of your site are:
- Compliance help ensure accessibility for the disabled.
- Compliance helps ensure that your website is accessible from a number of devices, from different browsers to the growing number of surfers using PDAs and cellular phones.
- Compliance will also help ensure that regardless of the browser, resolution, device, etc. that your website will look and function in the same or at least a very similar fashion.
Proper use of standards and bleeding edge best practices makes sure that not only is the copy marked up in a semantic fashion which search engines can interpret and weigh without confusion, it also skews the content-to-code ratio in the direction where it needs to be while forcing all of the information in the page to be made accessible, thus favoring the content.
To comply with the W3C Compliance and SEO, reduce the amount of code on your page and the content takes a higher priority. Additionally compliance will, by necessity, make your site easily spidered and additionally allow you greater control over which portions of your content are given more weight by the search engines.
