A recent study undertaken by Opera, the browser development company, finds that only 4.13% of the web complies to W3C standards. What this means for SEO is that search engine developers need to build applications that are prepared to deal with “junk code”. Because of this, more than likely, what you’re optimizing for is being reached by Google.

So why could being non-compliant still be a problem? Because engineers who make it their business to make the web work, such as search engine and browser developers, need to account for non-compliant code, they tend to focus on only a small amount of the most popular websites and assume that they encompass the normal amount of deviation from W3C compliance. (Google’s Chrome browser absolutely works under this assumption, as divulged in their comic)

More than likely, you’re not making the same mistakes that top traffic-driving sites are making; you’re making your own mistakes. It’s natural, and it’s okay. However, it reduces the likelihood that your site will be machine-readable, even with the fail-safes in place made by these designers.

So in order to make your site have a uniform look and absolute machine readability, your best chance is by getting your code up to compliance. There’s more than likely not a penalty for being non-compliant, but the converse certainly improves your chances at ranking for the keywords you’re targeting.

How do you get started with making sure your site is W3C-compliant? Validate it here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 11:56 am by relwell and is filed under Natural Search (SEO), Search Engines, Website Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.