Is W3C validation important ?

I've just checked my usb site, and apparently it has 14 errors according to the W3C validator here

Most of these are generated by the CMS putting a "/" at the end of a brackets and it will keep doing this even if i remove them.

How important is it to be W3C compliant? Will it / has it been effecting my SERP rankings in any way?

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Cheers

 

Well apparently your CMS is using xHTML language while your doctype is HTML (haven't tried to validate your site, but from what you tell that should be). However, validation of a HTML document is important as it is important writing grammatically correct the words with which you are expressing your self. If you expect huge improvements by eliminating the errors or afraid to have some serious penalization then I would not worry that much (well, I would still validate the document).

Hope this helps...somehow

 

correct the errors if you want a good google ranking.

 

Buddy no it doesn't effect ur rankings but if u keep it clean it would be much better. There are many sites on top with No validation but still rank on top. In short : Validation is much much better but it won't have any effect on rankings. But from my part i would prefer to go for clean validation or at the most minimize the errors.

 

No, unless you have any major errors in your code that affect a search engines ability to crawl and index your pages you'll be fine.


Google itself doesn't validate - http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=w...(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0

 

MattUK has given you the right answer

Unless your errors cause Google Bots to go berserk... or else you should care minimal about validation. With that being said, we should always follow good conventions

 

Ok, thanks for all of your comments on this topic. I'll be looking at all of my sites next week to try to ensure they pass the validation, just as part of good web design practice.

Cheers,

Dave