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7 Benefits of HTML Validation
Copyright
Herman Drost
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 be 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/
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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 will 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
=====================================================
Herman Drost is a Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
and owner of iSiteBuild.com
Web Site Design, Web
Hosting, Web Site Promotion
Author of “Marketing Tips” newsletter.
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(240) 334-3271
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