Hi guys, Does valid XHTML code influence ranking? I have a suspicion that it does for google but does it for other search engines? how much weight do they put on that? Thanks, JB
No Google does not verify the validity of your code. That would eat up way too much resources. You just have to ensure that there are no major coding problems that prevent the search engines from crawling and indexing your website.
The validity of the code as far as the DTD is concerned is ( or at least use to be ) important. The DTD is the first statement in a properly formed online document. Such as on this page : <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1......
There is a term known by SEO professionals called "Code 2 Content" and generally well written code is optimized and meaning there is a lot less rubbish there helping you to not only help you rank better but also make your visitors time on the site much more pleasant leading to that visitor more likely to return again. BUT . . . I am not saying it wins over everything because you will be able to find loads of poorly written websites ranking high, your primary goal really is unique and substantial content. All the best!
The below is good advice and should be taken into consideration with the fact that keyword density is important. I dont claim to be an SEO professional, but I do get high rankings for SEO optimization. It is a combination of things together on a page that make it good "spider food" or not. This thread started with talking about valid code and how it affects SEO. I believe it does. With xhtml coming out and code becoming more logically written ( without tables ) for webpages, on-page SEO should become even easier. It is possible to write for your human reader and for the Spider at the same time and make it palatable for both. Good luck !
Validation is nevertheless important, while we are heading deeper into the mobile web. The xhtml (xml + html ) standard was created as a way for mobile browsers to have a page to look at without having to scroll to China and back. Being able to be found on the search engine is important, but after you get there, will the mobile visitor be able to use your site ? The DTD declares to the browser how to handle your page. But... now we are getting off topic.
Google doesnt care about it..A few months ago I made a research and yeah though validation is important but it doesnt affect the ranking at all. You may check this site out: http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Search-Engines/Valid-HTML-Does-Google-Care.html