Nonsensical Discussion!!!

There is a thread in another forum that stretches for eight pages and I'm beginning to wonder whether that discussion was worth all the effort and time spent on it. For W3C maniac like me code validation is a must but I can't come to terms with this: Someone says code validation is needless and that it's better if you know how some HTML. Then why would you call this profession a knack of or a mixture of Art and Science, huh? Granted, you find your way to top with a couple of hundred errors and you might vaunt about that. Apparently one was enjoying a cackle at me when out of my own interest and pleasure cleaned up 355 errors and told him so it was set right. Ironically, he hails from the UK. Has he heard about the disability law coming into effect sooner or later?

Yes it looks like they snub SEOs who are good at code validation. Or do they envy them so much that they despise them because of having better or higher knowledge? Let's go by the good old Nietzschean adage: What does not harms me makes me stronger. So hell yeah SEOs-cum-Code Validators have an edge over other SEOs. Who knows, a directory editor may accept because the page seem to be neat and interoperable. Did I say browser compatibility? By all means, no. Web pages with validated codes need not necessarily be browser compatible: this is a common myth and this has to be set straight. Being interoperable means not browser compatible. It simply means the visitor can read and scan the page easily despite the fact that the site's layout or alignment may appear different in different browsers.

Let me give you another example: If you wrote a professional letter wouldn't you spell check it and rectify grammatical errors? It's the same like that: W3C Code validation is nothing but HTML proof reading.

Regards,
Dilip Samuel

 

Code validation for SEO purposes is way overrated. Search engine parsers are built to tolerate a vast amount of possible html errors. Just because a page has some error in the tags does not mean it is of low quality.
Of course, valid HTML is great but overthinking and having HTML nightmares around SEO is nonsense.