Why Valid HTML (XHTML) is important to SEO

What are do many webmaster write non valid HTML?  HTML or “hypertext Markup Language”, is vastly misused and written poorly throughout the web.  HTML is what the world wide web is made of and should be taken much more seriously. The validity of the HTML coding or programming is a very important.  But, you ask why is that important?  Most web pages are written in HTML or HTML is produced once a database query is asking for a page to be built on the fly .  Just like any other language on the planet, HTML has its own syntax, vocabulary, and grammar.  In other words, it needs to be readable by another computer and that very same computer will need to display it properly. Every online document written in HTML is supposed to follow these rules. In the natural progression of today’s internet, programming languages have long been perceived by the mainstream programmers as a “natural art” for designing websites and other web applications.  In the early days of the web, it was all text based and not graphical at all.  Once graphical user interfaces came to light on the web, so did HTML.

What is valid HTML code?

Valid HTML code is simply said programming code that is built in accordance with Web standards, and provides one of the most reliable guarantee that future Web platforms will handle it as designed. Validation is one of the simplest ways to check whether a page is up to snuff to today’s standards.

Why Web professionals choose to validate for Valid HTML?

• Valid HTML allows for greater accessibility, cross-browser compatibility, and can even possibly help your search engine rankings.
• When a search engine like Google crawls your site with it’s search bots, it has to parse the HTML code of your web site to find the actual relevant content to what you’re writing about. If your HTML code contains errors and is NOT valid HTML, search engines might not be able to find everything on the page.
• Search engine crawler programs obey the HTML standard. A non compliant site makes it extremely difficult to crawl or index your site if it the coding or programming is NOT compliant to the HTML standards set today.  While on your site, if the search engine locates an error in HTML, it may simply cease the crawling of your site just because of the error.

Although most major search engines can deal with minor errors in HTML code, a single missing bracket in your HTML code can be the reason if your web page cannot be found in search engines.

There are many uses for coding or programming your website(s) to be HTML valid or HTML compliant.

• Professional webmasters use validation as a debugging tool
• Professional webmasters use validation as a future-proof quality check
• Professional webmasters use validation to cross check their coding or programming skills.  It’s is one of the simplest ways to check whether a page is built in accordance with Web standards, and provides one of the most reliable guarantee that future Web platforms will handle it as designed.
• Professional webmasters use validation to eases maintenance
• Professional webmasters use validation to help teach good practices
• Validation is a sign of professionalism

Imagine telling a friend who has never been to your house and telling them directions on how to come over for a party.  You start to give them some directions based off a map but halfway through you start speaking in nonsense and gibberish. The friends wouldn’t have much luck in finding your house, would they?  The same is true for websites that are broken and have invalid HTML.  Valid HTML is one of the most important aspects of Search engine optimization.