There are 9 html and 35 css errors in my website. Is it worth it fixing them? Is it important for SEO? Btw the website that ranks first in google for my niche has 50+ errors so im wondering if its important
I think HTML error matters a lot. Now like you have to use proper alt and h1 tags. Because they are really matter for search engines. So don't ignore them.
You sell web design services but you don't know if you should fix your errors? That's like buying a new car but Ford doesn't care that the door doesn't latch. The car still runs and it looks the same if you hold the door shut, so who cares if we fix our errors? It's your website, and you're name is on it. If you want your name associated with error ridden websites, that's your call. No website should ever have any errors. Unless of course, you just don't give a damn.
Yes VERY. Else they won't be crawled properly by search engines and honestly I don't think it takes more than 10 mins to fix the errors. I think you spent more time posting this topic then you could've fixing the errors.
Good point I have thought that and honestly yes im not pretty sure yet how much important these errors are. At first i thought validation is high importance but after seeing many websites with errors that are 1000 times better than mine im still wondering? How important are these errors when websites like microsoft.com have 100 errors? Thats when i started wondering if its worth or not
Ahhhh, the very common "but he/she is doing it!" excuse. I do not give a damn what Microsoft or anyone else is doing. The bottom line is this: you sell websites. Your very own website has errors. This is not reassuring to potential clients (granted, most are too dumb to realize this even exists) when making a sale. As a developer, I pride myself and even advertise the fact that my code is valid and error free. Let me put it this way: You take your car in for new tires and they install 4 new tires on your car. They made an error when they installed them though and one tire is slightly off balance causing your car to wobble when it drives. You would expect them to fix their error, on their dime, for you. On the same hand, you sell a website and deliver it with 16 errors. Your client comes back and demands the errors be fixed. You will most likely tell them "the website still runs fine, error's are common, Microsoft has errors on their website". What if the garage who installed your tires says "The car still runs fine, you can get from point a to point b. That raggedy ass Oldsmobile down the street has a flat tire too." Do the work right. You're only giving the rest of us a bad name. Or, maybe I'm just too obsessive about doing things correctly and my post is totally wrong. You be the judge.
Honestly i like the way you think and good for you to have all your websites validated, even most of us dont. Im not here for promotion, my company is small/local But let me tell you something, do you use pci compliance standards to all your ecommerce websites? Why not? The standards are there and is good to follow them but some projects might dont need it. If you have important errors of course you have to fix them but everything has a cost. If you charge 500 USD for a website would you spent 5 hours to make it validate? Even if your customer is completely satisfied and the website is working great? And regarding your example with cars. There are Mercedes that cost 30 000 and honda that cost 10 000 and of course some honda dont follow every car standard, so what? They still sell millions of them and they are still good at road. If i would charge 3000 for every website then i dont mind to validate them all. And actually i dont think my clients are unhappy that their website not being validated as it works just fine, regarding the money they pay. But why the discussion went to this I know validation is important, just want to know how important is for SEO. low importance, medium importance or high important? Thank you
We're not comparing apples to apples here. Yes, I take the time on every single site to make sure it is error free. For SEO? No. For reputation? Yes. For customer satisfaction? Yes. For self satisfaction? Yes. On the same token, would I spend the time to do it on a $500 website? Yes. But a $500 website isn't going to get a whole lot from me, so I won't have much to correct. Also, if you get in the hang of correcting errors and seeing what you did wrong, your following projects will have less, or no, errors from the start. Very rarely do I have to go back and fix something. It's usually done correctly from the start. To answer the original question, you will get mixed opinions. I feel the important is medium, in terms of SEO. Google does like to see valid and correct code but they will not strike you with death if you have errors.
Meh. I think it depends on the errors. If they're structural (missing closing tags etc) then yes - you need to fix them. Without fixing them then the Googlebot might not be able to navigate your site in the way you intended - and your site might look crap in minority browsers. If they're crappy little CSS and HTML warnings where the W3C validator gets a little bit excited by non-standard syntax then don't worry too much. As long as you've tested your site in lots of browsers then it'll be fine. Fixing that sort of error will give you no SEO benefit.
It would also be worth mentioning that the majority of errors I've seen from W3C are easily fixed when the correct DOCTYPE is specified. HTML5 has made this super duper stupid easy. XHTML1.0 Transitional and others are a bit more complicated but nothing that Google can't answer for you.
Don't lissen to all the SEO Noobs Validation is simply a MYTH ... I rank hundred of sites and none was 100% valid ... that's just a MYTH ... i repeat just a MYTH ...
w3c validation can have impact for search engine visibility of your site, it is one of the factor google considering . but Google not place much value on that factor
HTML /CSS validation matters a lot. So you should fix it as early as possible and don't ignore them because it give panic to your site. Due to more error in website may be crawler can't crawl your website.