From reading
the title many of you are probably wondering what W3C
compliance has to do with SEO and many more are probably
wondering what W3C compliance is at all. Let's
begin by shedding some light on the later.
What Is W3C Compliance?
The W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium and basically,
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 and other popular browsers
that cater to incorrect design practices, there are
a number of compelling reasons to insure that you or
your designer insure that the W3C guidelines are followed
and that your site is brought into compliance.
In an interview with Frederick Townes of W3 EDGE Web
Design (http://www.w3-edge.com/)
he mentioned 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:
ˇCompliance help insure accessibility for the disabled.
ˇCompliance helps insure that your website is accessible
from a number of devices; from different browsers to
the growing number of surfers using PDA's and cellular
phones.
ˇCompliance will also help insure 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.
At this point you may be saying, Well that's all
well-and-good but what does this have to do with SEO?
Good question.
We at Beanstalk have seen many examples of sites performing
better after we had brought them, or even just their
homepage, into compliance with W3C standards.
While discussing this with Frederick he explained it
very well with:
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. We've seen several occasions
where the rebuilding of a site with standards, semantics
and our proprietary white hat techniques improves the
performance of pages site-wide in the SERPs.
Essentially what he is stating is a fairly logical conclusion,
reduce the amount of code on your page and the content
(you know, the place where your keywords are) 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.
Examples
The Beanstalk website and the W3 EDGE site themselves
serve as good examples of sites that performed better
after complying with W3C standards. With no other
changes than those required to bring our site into compliance
the Beanstalk site saw instant increases. The
biggest jumps were on Yahoo! with lesser though still
significant increases being noticed on both Google and
MSN.
As we don't give out client URLs I can't personally
list off client site examples we've noticed the same
effect on, however we can use W3 EDGE as another example
of a site that noticed increases in rankings based solely
on compliance.
So How Do I Bring My Site In Compliance With W3C Standards?
To be sure, this is easier said than done. Obviously
the ideal solution is to have your site designed in
compliance to begin with. If you already have
a website you have one of two options:
1.Hire a designer familiar with W3C standards and have
your site redone, or
2.Prepare yourself for a big learning curve and a bit
of frustration (though well worth both).
Resources
Assuming that you've decided to do the work yourself
there are a number of great resources out there.
By far the best that I've found in my travels is the
Web Developer extension for FireFox (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/).
You'll have to install the FireFox browser first and
then install the extension. Among other great
tools for SEO this extension provides a one-click check
for compliance and provides a list of where your errors
are, what's causing them and links to solutions right
from the W3C. The extension provides testing for
HTML, XHTML, CSS and Accessibility compliance.
Other resources you'll definitely want to check into
are:
ˇCSS Zen Garden (http://www.csszengarden.com/)
ˇA List Apart (http://www.alistapart.com/)
ˇHoly CSS ZeldMan! (http://www.dezwozhere.com/links.html)
(Frederick lists this one as one of the best resources
for the novice to find answers. I have to agree.)
Where Do I Get Started?
The first place to start would be to download FireFox
(count this as reason #47 to do so as it s a great browser)
and install the Web Developer extension. This
will give you easy access to testing tools.
The next step is to bookmark the resources above.
Once you've done these you'd do well to run the tests
on your own site while at the same time keeping up an
example site that already complies so you can look at
their code if need be.
To give you a less frustrating start I would recommend
beginning with your CSS validation. Generally
CSS validation is easier and faster than the other forms.
In my humble opinion it s always best to start with
something you'll be able to accomplish quickly to reinforce
that you can in fact do it.
After CSS you'll need to move on to HTML or XHTML validation.
Be prepared to set aside a couple hours if you're a
novice with a standard site. More if you have
a large site of course.
Once you have your CSS and HTML/XHTML validated its
time to comply with Accessibility standards. What
you will be doing is cleaning up a ton of your code
and moving a lot into CSS, which means you'll be further
adding to your style sheet. If you're not comfortable
with CSS you'll want to revisit the resources above.
CSS is not a big mystery though it can be challenging
in the beginning. As a pleasant by-product you
are sure to find a number of interesting effects and
formats that are possible with CSS that you didn't even
know were so easily added to your site.
But What Do I Get From All This?
Once you're done you'll be left with a compliant site
that not only will be available on a much larger number
of browsers (increasingly important as browsers such
as FireFox gain more and users) but you'll have a site
with far less code that will rank higher on the search
engines because of it.
To be sure, W3C validation is not the magic bullet
to top rankings. In the current SEO world there
is no one thing that is, however as more and more website
are born and the competition for top positioning gets
more fierce it's important to take every advantage you
can to not only get to the first page but to hold your
position against those who want to take it from you
as you took it from someone else.
Dave
Davies is the CEO of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning,
Inc. (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/) He
writes with years of experience in SEO and Internet
Marketing. A special thanks go out to Frederick Townes
of W3 EDGE for his help with this article. W3 EDGE (http://www.w3-edge.com/)
provides W3C-compliant website design for their clients.
To keep update on new SEO article be sure to visit the
Beanstalk blog (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/)
regularly for up-to-date SEO news. |
