You may have come across the W3C while researching web development and SEO.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web.
This web standards body develops coding specifications for web standards all over the world.
It also provides a validator service to ensure that your HTML (and other code) is correct and error-free.
One of the most important things you can do to achieve cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility and provide an accessible online experience for all is to ensure that your page validates.
Incorrect code can cause glitches, rendering errors, and lengthy processing or loading times.
Simply put, if your code fails to perform as intended across all major web browsers, it can have a negative impact on user experience and SEO.
W3C Validation: What It Is and Who It Helps SEO
Web standards are important because they provide web developers with a set of rules to follow when writing code.
If all of your company’s code is written using the same protocols, it will be much easier to maintain and update this code in the future.
This is especially important when working with code written by others.
If your pages follow web standards, they will pass validation using W3C validation tools.
When you use web standards as the foundation for your code, you ensure that it is user-friendly and has built-in accessibility.
In terms of SEO, validated code is always preferable to poorly written code.
Google, according to John Mueller, doesn’t care how your code is written. That is, a W3C validation error will not result in a drop in your rankings.
You will not rank higher if you use validated code.
However, well-formatted markup has some indirect SEO benefits:
- Eliminates Code Bloat: When you validate code, you tend to avoid code bloat. Validated code is typically leaner, better, and more compact than unvalidated code.
- Faster Render Times: Because the browser requires less processing, this could potentially translate to faster render times, and we know that page speed is a ranking factor.
- Contributions to Core Web Vitals Scores Through Indirect Means: When you adhere to coding standards, such as adding the width and height attributes to your images, you reduce the number of steps that the browser must take in order to render the page. Rendering times that are faster can help your Core Web Vitals scores, improving these important metrics overall.
Roger Montti compiled the following six reasons why Google still recommends code validation:
- Crawl rate may be affected.
- Browser compatibility is impacted.
- Promotes a positive user experience.
- Ensures that pages work everywhere.
- This is useful for Google Shopping Ads.
- Hreflang is broken due to invalid HTML in the head section.
Access to Multiple Devices
Valid code also contributes to better cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility because it adheres to the most recent W3C standards, and the browser will know how to process that code more effectively.
This results in a better user experience for people who access your sites from various devices.
If you have a validated site, it will display correctly regardless of the device or platform used to view it.
That is not to say that all code does not conform across multiple browsers and platforms without being validated, but there may be differences in rendering across different applications.
Reasons Why Code Doesn’t Validate
Of course, validating your web pages will not solve all of your site’s rendering issues across all platforms and browsing options. However, it goes a long way toward resolving those issues.
If something goes wrong with your validation, you now have a baseline from which to start troubleshooting.
You can examine your code to determine what is causing it to fail.
Because you know where to look, it will be easier to find and troubleshoot these issues with a validated site.
Having said that, there are a number of reasons why pages may fail to validate.
Browser-Specific Problems
It’s possible that something in your code will only work in one browser or platform and not in another.
The developer of the offending script would then have to address this issue.
This would necessitate editing the code itself in order for it to validate on all platforms/browsers rather than just a subset of them.
You’re Using Obsolete Code
Over the last few decades, the W3C has only recently begun to conduct rendering validation tests.
If your page was designed to validate in an earlier browser (IE 6 or earlier, for example), it will not pass these new standards because it was written with older technologies and formats in mind.
While this is a relatively uncommon problem, it does occur.
This issue can be resolved by reworking code to make it W3C compliant; however, if you want to maintain compatibility with older browsers, you may need to continue using code that works and forego passing 100% complete validation.
Both issues could be solved with a little trial and error.
Both types of sites, with some work and effort, should be able to validate across multiple devices and platforms without issue – hopefully!
Documents in Multiple Languages
Polyglot documents are any documents that were transferred from an older version of code and were never reworked to be compatible with the new version.
In other words, it is a collection of documents with a different code type than the current document (say an HTML 4.01 transitional document type compared to an XHTML document type).
Make no mistake: While both are technical “HTML,” they are very different languages that must be treated as such.
You can’t just copy and paste one and expect everything to be fine.
What exactly does this mean?
For example, you may have seen situations where you validated code, but nearly every single line of a document was incorrect according to the W3C validator.
This could be the result of someone transferring code from an earlier version of the site and failing to update it to reflect new coding standards.
In either case, the only way to fix this is to rework the code line by line (an extraordinarily tedious process).
How Does W3C Validation Work?
The W3C validator is this author’s preferred validator for ensuring that your code validates across a wide range of platforms and systems.
The W3C validator is free to use and can be found here.
You can validate your pages using the W3C validator by page URL, file upload, or Direct Input.
- Validate Your Pages Using URLs: This is a fairly simple process. Simply copy and paste the URL into the Address field, then click the check button to validate your code.
- Validate Your Pages by File Upload: When you validate your pages by file upload, you will upload the html files of your choice, one at a time. Caution: If you’re using Internet Explorer or a specific version of Windows XP, this option might not work for you.
- Validate Your Pages Through Direct Input: With this option, all you have to do is copy and paste the code you want to validate into the editor, and the W3C validator will take care of the rest.
While some professionals claim that some W3C errors have no rhyme or reason, there is a rhyme and reason in 99.9 percent of cases.
If there is no rhyme or reason throughout the document, you should consider our section on polyglot documents below as a potential problem.
Syntax of HTML
Let’s begin at the beginning with HTML syntax. This is the most common coding that you will encounter as an SEO professional because it is the backbone of the World Wide Web.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has developed a specification for HTML 5 known as “the HTML5 Standard.”
This document describes how HTML should be written at the optimal level for processing by popular browsers.
If you go to their website, you can use their validator to ensure that your code is compliant with this specification.
They even provide examples of some of the rules that they look for when determining compliance with standards.
This makes it easier than ever before to double-check your work before publishing it!
Other Language Validators
Let’s now look at some of the other languages you might be using online.
CSS3, for example, maybe familiar to you.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has standards documentation for CSS 3 as well, dubbed “the CSS3 Standard.”
This means there will be even more opportunities for validation!
To ensure platform compatibility, validate your HTML against their standard and then validate your CSS against the same standard.
While it may appear to be overkill to validate your code against so many different standards at once, keep in mind that this means there are more chances than ever to ensure platform conformity.
And for those of you who only work in one language, this is your chance to broaden your horizons!
It can be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to perfectly align everything, so you must pick your battles.
You might also need something checked quickly online if you don’t have the time or resources to do so locally.
Validation Errors That Are Common
As you go through the validation process, you should be aware of the most common validation errors, as well as what those errors mean.
If your page does not validate, you will know exactly where to look for potential issues.
The following are some of the most common validation errors (and their meanings):
- Type Mismatch: When your code attempts to make one type of data object appear to be another type of data object (e.g., submitting a number as text), you risk receiving this message. This error usually indicates that a coding error has occurred. The solution would be to determine where the error occurred and correct it so that the code validates successfully.
- Parse Error: This error indicates that there was a coding error somewhere, but it does not specify where the error occurred. If this happens, you’ll have to do some serious detective work to figure out where your code went wrong.
- Syntax Errors: These types of errors involve (mostly) careless coding syntax mistakes. Either the syntax is incorrectly typed or the context is incorrect. In any case, these errors will be detected by the W3C validator.
The errors listed above are just a few examples of what you might encounter while validating your page.
Unfortunately, the list goes on and on – as does the amount of time spent attempting to solve these issues!
Errors That Are More Specific (And Their Solutions)
More specific errors that apply to your site may be found. They may contain errors referencing “type attribute used in tag.”
This refers to tags such as JavaScript declaration tags, such as: script type=”text/javascript”>.
This tag’s type attribute is no longer required and is now considered legacy coding.
If you use that type of coding now, you may end up throwing validation errors all over the place in certain validators unintentionally.
Did you know that failing to use alternative text (alt text) – also known as alt tags by some – is a W3C violation? It does not follow the W3C accessibility guidelines.
The text that is coded into images is known as alternative text.
It is primarily used by screen readers for the visually impaired.
If a blind person visits your website and there is no alternative text (or meaningful alternative text) in your images, they will be unable to use it effectively.
The way these screen readers work is that they speak aloud the words that are coded into images, allowing the blind to understand what’s on your website through their sense of hearing.
If your page is not easily accessible in this regard, it could lead to another sticky situation: accessibility lawsuits.
This is why it is important to be aware of your accessibility standards and to validate your code against them.
Tags used out of context are another type of common error.
For code context errors, ensure that they are repaired in accordance with the W3C documentation so that the validator no longer throws these errors.
Keeping Errors from Interfering with Your Site Experience
The best way to avoid validation errors is to ensure that your site validates before launch.
It’s also a good idea to validate your pages on a regular basis after they’ve been launched so that new errors don’t appear unexpectedly over time.
When you think about it, validation errors are like spelling mistakes in an essay: once they’re there, they’re difficult (if not impossible) to remove, and they need to be fixed as soon as possible.
If you make it a habit to always use the W3C validator to validate your code, you can effectively prevent these coding errors from occurring in the first place.
Be Warned: There Are Multiple Ways To Do It
Validation may not always go as planned in accordance with all standards.
And there are multiple ways to achieve the same goal.
For example, using button> to create a button and then inserting a href tag within it using the a> element does not appear to be possible according to W3C standards.
However, this is perfectly acceptable in JavaScript because there are ways to accomplish this within the language itself.
This is an example of how we generate this code and insert it into the W3C validator’s direct input:
As previously discussed, during validation, we discover at least four errors within this particular code alone, indicating that this is not a particularly well-coded line:
While validation can be extremely beneficial in general, it is not always 100 percent complete.
This is why it’s critical to practice coding with the validator as much as possible.
Some modifications will be required. However, experience is required to achieve the best possible cross-platform compatibility while remaining compliant with today’s browsers.
The ultimate goal here is to increase accessibility and compatibility with all browsers, operating systems, and devices.
Validation achieves a cohesive set of instructions and standards that can accomplish the goal of making your page equal enough for all browsers and devices.
Always err on the side of proper code validation when in doubt.
By incorporating the absolute best practices into your coding, you can ensure that your code is as accessible as possible to all types of users.
Furthermore, validating your HTML against W3C standards aids in achieving cross-platform compatibility between various browsers and devices.
By working to ensure that your code always validates, you will be well on your way to ensuring that your site is as safe, accessible, and efficient as possible.
Learn more from SEO and read 7 Ways To Make The Most Of Your Enterprise SEO Freelancers.
