What is W3C?
W3C, which is the short form of World Wide Web Consortium, is basically an organization for internally accepted web standards. It is also abbreviated as WWW. The staff members of this organization try to bring innovation, stability and uniformity in the international web standards. Their main purpose is to make the web reach to its full potential, by achieving sustainable and consistent growth.
What is W3C Validation?
W3C has certain standards to create web codes for any website. W3C validation is simply a validation of your codes to know whether they are in compliance with all the recent updates and changings or not. W3C validation can be understood as a way of checking the accuracy of your codes. The W3C organization needs all the websites to be up to a certain standard – and with a uniform one as well – so the internet users may not suffer many problems because of different practices. By validating your codes, you can be assured that your website complies with the international standards, and all the written codes are perfectly okay.
Benefits of W3C Validation – Why should you Care about it?
Many times, every code of your website seems to be working totally fine, but in reality, other visitors might not experience the same thing. Therefore, it is always a good idea to validate your codes. Following are some major benefits and advantages of W3C validation:
1. It Identifies and Removes Many Errors
Working as an effective debugging tool, W3C validation can help you identify and remove many errors in your web codes. As it is already mentioned that many times these codes look differently to other users; for instance, if someone is using a different browser or resolution, etc. In such a scenario, W3C validation ensures that the DTD you specify is in compliance with the accepted standards.
2. It helps Beginners
We all make mistakes when designing websites. W3C validation can help beginners in many great ways by teaching them good practices. More complex coding often requires automated checkers.
3. Removal of Hard Validation Error
Hard validation errors, unlike the soft validation errors, cause rendering issues in your website. A simple unclosed anchor tag can cause something like that. W3C validation can help removing such serious issues that cause rendering problems.
W3C Validation and SEO
Apart from all the above-mentioned advantages and benefits, one of the biggest reasons for W3C validation is to improve search engine rankings. Major search engines, especially Google, always prefer the W3C validation websites. This preference helps greatly in improving your site’s search engine rankings.
Search engines prefer W3C validated websites for the following major reasons:
1. Fast Loading Time
A W3C validated website loads faster because of its error-free coding. And as we all know that fast loading time is now a major factor in Google’s ranking system.
2. Up-to Date and Developed Website
As the W3C validation is a sign that your website is professionally developed and up-to date to all the recent standards, it impresses search engines. By doing the W3C validation, you send a positive message that your website is not like the other sites with messed up codes and errors.
3.Lower Bounce Rates
As your website has error-free coding, it can achieve lower bounce rates, which is another important factor in the search engines’ ranking system.