W3C Compliance

1 January 2010

The W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium and since 1994 the W3C has provided the rules by which websites and web pages should be structured and created. The rules they outline are based on the best practices and while websites don't have to comply to be viewed correctly in Internet Explorer and other popular browsers that cater to incorrect design practices, there are a number of compelling reasons to ensure that you or your designer ensure that the W3C guidelines are followed and that your site is brought into compliance.

Bringing websites In Compliance With W3C Standards?

The ideal solution is to have your site designed in compliance to begin with. If you already have a website you have one of two options:

  1. Appoint a designer familiar with W3C standards and have your site redone, or
  2. Prepare yourself for a big learning curve and a bit of aggravation.

Resources

Assuming that you've decided to do the work yourself there are a number of great resources out there. By far the best that I've found in my travels is the Web Developer extension for Firefox. You'll have to install the Firefox browser first and then install the extension. Among other great tools for SEO this extension provides a one-click check for compliance and provides a list of where your errors are, what's causing them and links to solutions right from the W3C. The extension provides testing for HTML, XHTML, CSS and Accessibility compliance.

Other resources you'll definitely want to check into are:

  • CSS Zen Garden
  • A List Apart
  • Holy CSS ZeldMan!

How to Get Started?

  • The first place to start would be to download Firefox and install the Web Developer extension. This will give you easy access to testing tools.
  • The next step is to bookmark the resources above.
  • Once you've done these you'd do well to run the tests on your own site while at the same time keeping up an example site that already complies so you can look at their code if need be.
  • To give you a less annoying starts beginning with your CSS validation. Usually CSS validation is easier and faster than the other forms.
  • Once finished with CSS move on to HTML or XHTML validation. Once CSS and HTML/XHTML are validated it's time to comply with Accessibility standards. In this clean up a ton of your code and moving a lot into CSS, which means you'll be further adding to your style sheet. If you're not comfortable with CSS you'll want to revisit the resources above. CSS is not a big mystery though it can be taxing in the beginning. As a pleasing by-product you are sure to find a number of interesting effects and formats that are possible with CSS that you didn't even know were so easily added to your site.

But What Do I Get From All This?

Once you're done you'll be left with a compliant site that not only will be available on a much larger number of browsers (increasingly important as browsers such as Firefox gain more and users) but you'll have a site with far less code that will rank higher on the search engines because of it.

To be sure, W3C validation is not the "magic bullet" to top rankings. In the current SEO world there is no one thing that is. However as more and more website are born and the competition for top positioning gets more fierce it's important to take every advantage you can to not only get to the first page but to hold your position against those who want to take it from you as you took it from someone else.