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.

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

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