Hi all, Is there any relation between HTML validation(http://validator.w3.org/) and SEO ? What will be the problem if a web page or the home page of any web site failed the html validation Is there any penalties by search engines ?
Depends on how badly you miss the validation. The search engines hate websites with tons of errors. But, for the most part as long as they can scan the page, and follow links they pretty much don't care. The problem is lots of 404's, timeouts, etc. Those are the bad ones.
base from my experience, validation is not important in SEO, i have seen a lot of site with a lot of validation error but still manage to rank, and some site W3C validated but not ranking. Though I still do validation on most of my site.
i have to agree with the others: It is better for your site, when there are no hml coding mistakes. But it is also not so importatant to pass the validator with no mistakes. As long as there is not everything bad and it looks good, it is ok.
I agree here - for the most part, valid code has nothing to do with SERP. But don't get me wrong - I always make sure that my code is valid, and I'd recommend you make sure yours is. I write valid code to ensure my site works well cross-browser, and it assures me that my site will work with new releases of certain browsers.
But i have seen many seo firms giving much importance to validation. They are providing HTML validation error fixing as a part of their services. So I don't understand why ? While search engines are taking this type of errors so lightly...
IMHO if your code is readable to SE bots, and major browsers, is good enough. Strict W3C validity is not important for SEO.
The reason is quite simple; to give another benefit to the customer and add more "perceived" or not "value" to the service(s) - thereby justifying the rates charged.
No Importance At All !!! SEO firms give it importance because they are experts and they want to make some extra cash and for them its an extra point to count