Cutting down W3C Errors - Faster Bot Crawls

Having clean HTML can enable search engine bots to crawl
through your website more efficiently. I bring this up because
many people using Blogger have had issues over the past
week or so and I think it could have a little bit to do with W3C
Validation. Maybe this wasn't the case, but even so, newbies,
especially Blogger users, are notorious for having horrible HTML
code. Cleaning up this code will enable search engine bots to
crawl more efficiently through your site.

When it comes to Blogger, there is only so much you can
actually do to cut your html errors. This takes the
W3 Validation process to a whole 'nother level.

Let's put it this way, if you have a widget on your blog, you have
an error. If you do anything outside of the HTML section of Blogger,
you have an error. If you have 'Entrecard' on your blog, you likely
have an error. Not filling out those alt image tags? ERROR!

The only way to be error free is by completely doing everything in
HTML. You know that section of blogger that allows you to change
your Fonts and Colors? That's one big error in the system.

Don't ask me how, but this guy managed to make the home page
of his blog error free. Of course, he's not using hacks such as the
"expandable post summary hack," or the "title tag optimization hack."
Even so, having no errors in Blogger is a daunting task and this guy pulled it off.

Me? I managed to pull it off also on my test blog. However, if I
want comments enabled I get errors. Still, not too shabby.

This is the best I have gotten my errors down to for website A Man'z Blog.
This of course, is with comments enabled, and also some website hacks included.

Cutting my errors down from a big 400+ and over 100+ warnings all the way
to 38 errors and 30 warnings will allow search engine bots to be more efficient
while crawling my site. Overall, my pages will be indexed quicker and traffic will increase.
I have read that W3 validation doesn't have a direct impact on PR or SERP.
However, being indexed faster than normal and being more "liked" by the search engines never hurts.

Tip: Click here to learn how to cut your errors sometimes and almost in 1/2 in one simple step.

 

thanks for the heads up, appreciate it

 

i completely agree...

however, i dont think its much needed at the moment as at least in my niche, my competitors who rank top of the SERPS and have tons of errors are still there...its not mandatory but definitely helps

 

great efforts, i will also do in free time .

 

I agree.

My website is running XHTML 1.0 STRICT & CSS validated by W3C with zero (0) errors. I have defiantly noticed a slight advantage comparing them to some competitors sites. They get indexed fast and for the most part keep their high position in serps.

This may be luck on my part or go along with the new web 2.0 structure. I think it's the structure. If you take your time and code your site right, it'll greatly benefit you.

Let me ask this, has anyone ever went through their website with a screen reader? Try it, that's basically how the site appears to the Google Bot.

I even went to the extent of formatting the CSS so even broken images and titles would display a certain way. This isn't Black Hat, but some very very clever ways to plan and structure a page.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

- Jeff

 

I've seen somewhere (maybe webpronews) a video interview with Vanessa Fox about sitemeaps, where, at one point, she states that google doesn't care about code, but all they want is good content.
At the moment having a clean, error free code, is not a google issue, but it sure makes your pages render faster and they are much easier to debug.
Did you ever wonder why google's code (e.g. adsense) never validate?

 

so the bottomline is content content content?

 

Oh. Well. Thanks for the update. Can anyone confirm this?
PS: My template has a lot of errors right now because
it's not my "Error Free Template"

My amanzblog site also has more errors because I quickly
through some things together last night. I'll fix the errors
when I get back from Nevada on Friday.

 

I think wordpress is the better option for validating the w3c statdards.

 

I redone one of my sites about 6 weeks ago, it had 600+ errors and i converted it to Valid xHTML Strict & CSS 2.1 and it made zero difference to it's rankings or crawl rate.

Every time i have done this it's made no difference, even Matt Cutt's done a video saying it's not something Google takes in to account.

 

got the link to vanessa's video:
http://videos.webpronews.com/2006/12/06/vanessa-fox-clarifies-the-role-of-google-sitemaps/

 

That was a great post! Thanks for the link!
In response to that, I have found this video that may be of some interest

http://videos.webpronews.com/2008/08/29/ses-catching-up-with-vanessa-fox/