How important is it to get the code validated by w3

With respect to seo, how important is it to get your site validated by w3?
I am not speaking about the basic structure of the site. The site that i have designed has got all the codes (doctype, meta tags, title, etc).
I have used css in it and in a couple of instances i have used a single name for the common structure occurances.
For example, my site includes three tables one below the other. The structure is the same, however it should be position one below the other. Let us say that i have used the id name as table for the boxes. Now i have used the word three times (one below the other) since i just want to place it in specific position without changing the structure.
However when i try to validate it, i am getting around 8-10 errors most of them saying that i have used the id name before.
In this instance, how important is the validation? Nothing is wrong with both the design and the tag names. I have just used the same id name three times, not for three different ids but the same id three times.
Will it affect my seo rating?
Regards

 

Unless your HTML and CSS are seriously sketchy, W3 validation is believed to have "marginal" impact on your search prominence.

That said, W3 validation is still a best practice since it makes your site easier to maintain and ensures that more users will have it rendered properly in their browsers.

In the real-world, most of us get as close to W3 as we can ... and then move on to other, more pressing issues/opportunities

 

As i said, my only problem seems to be the repeated occurance of the id name...i too have done the same thing, just thought will ask here once

 

Just check the biggest and the most popular websites with W3 validation, you can still find that these websites have many errors from the validation. W3 is just a standard, but it's not mandatory.

 

Rankings W3C Compliance

They are not related...

 

Unfortunately rankings have very little to do with w3c compliance. But I am curious why you use an 'id' more than once on a given page.

 

There is no relation between your SERP & w3c compliance.

 

Follow W3C compliance in order to keep your pages well-written and fast for visitors and search engine spiders to crawl your site.

 

I must follow up on this, the actual tidiness of your website coding according to W3C Or Tidy will not affect your rankings. But for instance as a web design company, who would want to hire you if they knew your website had tons of errors? I know I wouldn't. So in that respect it can help a bit.

 

I would have to seriously disagree with people on this thread. If you think W3 compliance does not make a difference then you have the wrong information or you simply like to give advice. Yes, if you do a search for any keyword you will get websites in the top search results which are not W3 compliant but that by no means shows that you do not need W3 compliance and nor can that be used as evidence to support such an argument.

W3 compliance enables spiders to crawl or index your website much easier. You can make a W3 compliant website and you will not even need a site map for your website. It will be crawled easily and you will get a good position to start off. Remember if your website is difficult to navigate that will – yes I assure you – that will hurt your position. Of course that said it is important to realize that W3 compliance will not get you into the top results, but it is important and you will see it in the long run.

Remeber SEO is not about overnight results and nor is about one fix. Rather it’s a slow process and the more ingredients you utilize the quicker you will climb the ladder. That my dear is true.

 

Got any examples of non compliant pages that are difficult to crawl/index that back up your claim?

Just out of interest, how did you measure how difficult the spiders found it?

 

I disagree totally, it may help but is not necessary at all!

 

Theres no need to get the pages validated from SEO point of view. I think its main purpose is to show end customers that they have got a high quality website

 

I think W3C standards compliance usually don't help your site's SERPs, and even if they do help that benefit would be pretty negligible. Search engines are more focused on the content of your pages and how popular your pages are. Meeting with W3C standards will make your page script optimized, and display properly in all browsers.

 

Amen, finally a voice of truth like mine!

 

If you have broken code, the search engines may not be able to interpret it the way you intend the content to come across. Hence, you content may not have the same initial importance/meaning that you are trying to convey.

I would say it's not needed to have the most strict of validation, but it is always good a standard to use compliant code. It takes no more time and really only involves making sure you code it well structured. It really comes down to closing your tags and using quotes around values.

 

Seems like it's you that likes to throw out random pieces of advice that don't fit together.

Your website's coding won't win you that #1 SERP you were hoping for. Your web code has to do with your site's efficiency and speed. A search engine spider can get in and out faster if you are following proper format, that's true. So, in a way, w3c format is optimizing your site for the spiders. But it most certainly has no affect on your SERPs.

Navigation is key, correct. But Google's spiders aren't stupid enough to pass up a website's index only because it isn't formatted the way W3C recommends. I can prove this just by looking at my sites, as well as many many other websites ranking 1-3 in highly searched keyword phrases.

 

We spend all this time and money on a site, I say leave no rock unturned!

 

Has anyone tried to validate Google or Yahoo? You get hundreds of errors.....I try to write clean and concise code but I don't lose sleep over it.

 

Where is that validator, id like to see my sites in it.