7 Benefits of HTML Validation
You may not bother with html validation or writing simple and
clean code when designing your web site. Later you may find your
site is slow loading, appears incorrectly in the main browsers
and does not rank well for the major search engines.
Now there are sites that still do rank well even though the html
code has many errors. This is because most of the current major
browsers are still very forgiving of html mistakes, however
future browsers will become more html compliant as the Internet
advances. Sites that have not bothered with html code validation
will then fall by the wayside or take time and money to be
corrected.
That's why you should take the necessary steps NOW to make sure
that the code on your web site is validated.
What is HTML validation?
This is the process that analyzes an HTML document in comparison
to standard HTML rules, identifying errors and non-standard
codes. Web pages are rendered using HTML (Hyper Text Markup
Language). As with any language there are rules and standards
that should be followed. For example the HTML 4.01 Specification
(rules and standards) are available at
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/. You can check the html validation
of your web page by entering your url at:
http://validator.w3.org/
7 Benefits of HTML validation
1. Web Site Accessibility - validating your html code helps to
pinpoint areas of potential blockage that could prevent search
engine spiders or visitors from accessing your website. When you
run your site through a code validator it may produce many
errors that need to be corrected so your pages will render well.
ie include text with your "alt" tags for every < img > tag.
Why should you do this?
-Allows your site to be accessible to a larger audience (vision
impaired, motor skill impaired, cognitive impaired)
-Allows your site to be accessed by wider range of devices (hand
helds, screen readers, text browsers, search engines)
-Is a requirement for Federal and State Government sites
2. Search engine friendly pages - clean and simple code enables
search engines to spider your pages more quickly and completely.
Here's an example:
What's wrong with this code?
< p keyword1 sentence, well written copy, etc.
< p > keyword2 paragraph with more choice content.
This code is missing a ">" The issue is not that the page will
necessarily get skipped altogether but that the "keyword1"
sentence looks like part of the tag - like a tag attribute. So
the words in the "keyword1" sentence probably won't be included
in the search engines computations, even though the page itself
will be indexed.
Once a spider sees a correct tag further along in the page, then
it's back on course. So, the keyword2 paragraph would make it.
3. Faster Loading - if your web page contains html errors it
will take a longer time for the search engines to spider it,
therefore slowing the loading time. If your page doesn't load in
under 10 seconds your visitors may click away to your
competitors' sites.
4. Less load on servers - clean and simple code won't tax your
server as much as a site which has complicated code or contain
many nested tables. Cascading style sheets (CSS) will greatly
reduce the amount of code within your web pages. This will also
cut down on the amount of web space and bandwidth used thus
saving you money for hosting your site.
5. Easier to update and maintain web site - with no mistakes in
your html code it is easier and faster to make changes to your
web pages. For web site designers, this means you will save time
and money when maintaining clients' sites.
6. Browser compatibility - validated code ensures your site is
compatible with the current browsers and future browsers. You
might say "well, it looks fine in Internet Explorer, so why
bother with any other browsers?" Current browsers will continue
to update their rules and future browsers will make sure they
are html compliant.
7. Access more visitors - if you ensure your web pages appear
correctly in all the major browsers you will be able to reach a
larger audience which then increases the potential of your site
to make more sales.
Part 2 of this article will discuss:
What documents to validate The validation process Validation
tools Common validation errors