What do people think about this topic? Is it necessary to write standards compliant code for your websites? Do you use the The W3C Markup Validation Service?

There are a lot of websites arguing the pros and cons of compliance and SEO - without really good quality search engine statistics, it's like arguing which is the best religion!

I just had a look through several pages about it, and there's not much in the way of consensus:

No direct effect, but some indirect effect:
http://www.evolt.org/w3c-compliance-and-seo

No need for 100% compliance, but watch out for new / mobile browsers:
Does W3C compliance and accessibility impact your Search Engine Optimization

Content-code ratio:
Search Engine Marketing Blog by ineedhits: Does W3C Compliance Impact SEO?

Google's Adam Lasnik - no direct effect ... unless it's really bad:
Interview of Google's Adam Lasnik on March 26, 2007

Indexability and keyword placement:
Does valid markup affect search performance? clear and simple web development highly-visible

Source ordering (not sure about this one!):
Skidoo Too : Ruthsarian Layouts

__________________
Sean says:
Read my blog | Ask My Spider

Well, I guess you don't have to strictly follow the standards. You should try your best, but the world won't end if you don't follow.
from my experience, I always try to comply with standards, but sometimes there is this stubborn bug somewhere, specially in CSS, that won't be fixed unless you use dirty code hack that doesn't necessary confirm with the standards. in such cases, I say to heck with standards... Of course I feel guilty after ward, but it is better than being stuck in fixing one bug and waste valuable time. my 2cents of thought.

xhtml validations doesnt make your site look better or doesnt really improve your seo stats..

its just the best way to get across all browsers, all servers..

which means, bots doesnt have difficulties crawling your site , ie6 got no problem viewing your site .. blablabla...


There is NO effect on SEO , its just erm, indirect effects.

SEOing is all about tricks and strategies ..

example, most websites, footer will have a branding of the web developement company lets say, "Web design by webmastermalaysia.com"

normally web masters will link <a> "webmastermalaysia.com" but what you want is the keyword, so the right strategy for SEO here is actually to link up "web design" because thats the key word

Complying with web standards can give your web pages greater visibility in web searches. The structural information presented in compliant documents makes it easy for search engines to access and evaluate the information in those documents, and they get indexed more accurately.

It also means your pages will be accessible not only to search engines but also to anyone with disabilities (needing voice over software) In the UK and USA accessible websites are becoming required by Law (at least for big firms)

As website designers and developers we need to educate our clients about the value of standard compliant websites and in the end standards are what will set the professional websites apart from hobby websites.

I dont think its easy to educate the client...

if your passionate about what you believe in your clients will be interested in your point of view.

achieving great things is never easy.

Yah, I think if you use tableless way of designing the code is less cluttered so easy for the search engine to scan. e.g. use div tags. Also utilize the header tags for all your titles and subtitles H1, H2 etc. And name your pages and page titles so that is relevant.

A ver good question indeed. It may affect minimally most likely from the perspective of faster scanning. However, accuracy is still determined by the content of the webpage or website.

Otherwise, we're going to have crazy optimizers doing DIV id="website-design-malaysia". ROFL! :P

__________________
Websites Made Simple is my Malaysia website design blog.

You know friends if your site having static page and want to make all link pages shorten as a static. Joomla SEO in Joomla CMS at semaphore-software.com is best source to optimize your site as a SEO friendly.

If I can have a valid xhtml website, I will...

If I notice some errors that are related to basic css, I will fix them....

If they are specific problems that should be solved with css3 or something, I'll leave them be.

I agree; no point in wasting efforts on that 100 percent. If you operate an SEO service however; it's pretty nice to have a 100 percent valid website

I use the HTML Validator plugin and the SEO plugin in Firefox, both work like a charm...