Comments on: Valid Source Code Helps SEO?

By: Ronald Redito

Ronald Redito — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 18:01:29 +0000

I once bumped into a site where it shows you how your site looks on other browsers. My site looks good on Firefox, IE and Chrome, does this source codes affects the layout?

By: turki

turki — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 10:46:12 +0000

agree it may be a minimal quality score factor but nothing beyond minimal. If you are optimizing a site and look at ROI on time spent this one should be at the bottom of the list

By: s

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 05:36:52 +0000

By: Utah SEO

Utah SEO — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 09:20:39 +0000

I agree it may be a minimal quality score factor but nothing beyond minimal. If you are optimizing a site and look at ROI on time spent this one should be at the bottom of the list.

By: Mike Touch

Mike Touch — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 22:49:59 +0000

Reading the original post I got worried but then I read the comments and saw how a site doesn’t have to be validated to get good rankings. This is good to know as my site doesn’t have valid XHTML at the moment.

By: It’s LinkBombing Time! - 6/25/07

It’s LinkBombing Time! - 6/25/07 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:07:32 +0000

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By: Wtricks

Wtricks — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 12:26:54 +0000

I have paid more attention lately to a cleaner code and I think this can help me more. by coding myself the layouts and working on the SEO as I type I do give myself more chances to actually increase my sites’ chances for a better place in the searches and some more traffic.

By: Blogging Tips

Blogging Tips — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:25:08 +0000

Validating is an important thing, whether we like it or not – but I’ve known a few sites that look differently in different browsers although they are validated, so I guess validation doesn’t catch everything.

By: Make Money Online with a 13-year old » Blog Archive » It’s LinkBombing Time! - 6/25/07

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 10:36:32 +0000

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By: Make Money Online with a 13-year old » Blog Archive » Itâ€™s LinkBombing Time! - 6/25/07

Sun, 22 Jul 2007 11:09:56 +0000

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By: Nomar

Nomar — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 06:36:28 +0000

hmm I didnt know thise.. good article

By: Patrick Lee

Patrick Lee — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 21:29:03 +0000

Valid code is good in that one may avoid a lot of layout/formatting bugs that could otherwise creep into a design. But saying that valid code helps SEO is really oversimplifying things. As another commenter noted, Google’s own home page doesn’t even validate.

One thing that DOES help SEO is using external CSS and JS files instead of cramming it all into your HTML files. This increases your keyword density because Google makes no distinction between actual text, HTML formatting, CSS, JS, or anything else. This is also better from a maintenance and performance standpoint, so it’s good all around.

By: Natron

Natron — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:34:43 +0000

I have a few sites that are 100% valid xHTML, didn’t notice any improvement in SERPs. I still think it’s good practice, “Leave no rock unturned”

By: It’s LinkBombing Time! - 6/25/07

It’s LinkBombing Time! - 6/25/07 — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 14:58:40 +0000

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By: Florchakh

Florchakh — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 10:24:05 +0000

Let’s say there is a batch of tags that you have to use correctly. But definitely it doesn’t means that your page must be valid to be ok with Google, right?

By: David Airey :: Creative Design ::

David Airey :: Creative Design :: — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 08:31:43 +0000

With the amount of third party code on my site it would take an age to validate my archives. I found YouTube videos in particular to be a source of incorrect validation.

By: Nate Whitehill

Nate Whitehill — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 01:22:03 +0000

Just because their site doesn’t validate does not mean they are not a trustworthy source. I have actually read a lot of good material at Search Engine Journal. Even Google’s homepage does not validate. It is actually pretty rare when a site is perfectly XHTML valid. Nonetheless, they raise some interesting points as does John Lampard about how pages determine content vs. code when there are tags left open and other inconsistencies in the source code.

By: Interesting Links « Organized Mashup

Interesting Links « Organized Mashup — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 00:46:22 +0000

[...] Valid Source Code Helps SEO? [...]

By: Make Money With Funds

Make Money With Funds — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 22:27:34 +0000

Sure. Make sure it’s valid as xHTML Transitional plus check if it’s readable when CSS is turned off.
Firefox has a feature to turn off CSS: Menu->View->Page Style -> No Style.

If it looks ugly and unreadable without CSS, then you need to work on the site’s layout…

By: Make Money With Funds

Make Money With Funds — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 22:25:34 +0000

I know that Adsense bot will not parse your site if it’s not valid… so, it really does help.

By: Frank

Frank — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 22:24:36 +0000

I think that it’s a little unfair to penalise sites for sloppy code, if this is indeed the case. The web should be about the ability to publish and have a voice. When only a small percentage of site owners are coders then it disadvantages everyone else. I believe compliance is a good thing that everyone should strive for but to negatively impact your SERPS for non-compliance is a bit harsh.

By: Step up Your SEO by Sticking to Standards | Craig Soup Blog

Step up Your SEO by Sticking to Standards | Craig Soup Blog — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 19:35:53 +0000

[...] thanks to an article that Nate Whitehill pointed out, I recently discovered that using Web Standards is also very important for Search [...]

By: Florchakh

Florchakh — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 10:32:02 +0000

Do you give your trust, Nate? Take a look at this and tell me – are they reliable?

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.searchenginejournal.com

By: Gary Lee

Gary Lee — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 07:46:10 +0000

argh . they didn’t teach this stuff in web design 101 at Irvine . . . .

By: John Lampard

John Lampard — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 06:24:43 +0000

Good article. In a lot of cases if you are working with XHTML and CSS anyway making your code standards compliant can sometimes be quite simple. Even just changing things like the ampersand (&) to & in your code, or closing image tags with /> rather than > can make all the difference.