Basics people...
Only two comments. First, it's not more difficult to create a valid site, in my opinion it's quite easy if you start correctly. Do you work right, don't keep f'ing around.
Matt Cutts recently did a video based on what makes a good site. #1 issue is that your site is browseable by a text browser, all the way through your site.
Valid code, with clean layout and proper navigation makes this happen very nicely. The better a site can be navigated, the better it will do.
Everyone here is discussing how valid code can't affect search engine results, and for that, I have to disagree. I recently took over the design of a major medical web site. 100k unique visitors each month. The site had begun plummeting in the rankings over the last 6-12 months. I have begun working on the site, adding only the basic content that was already being added which was 2-3 news articles each month and nothing else.
I have begun validating the code, and replacing image based link menus with text based CSS UL menus. Within 30 days, we've seen a jump of almost 100% in the number of referrals coming from Google to our site. And that numbers grows each and every day.
None of us know everything that makes a site rank in the search engines. Anyone that tells you they do, run.
I'm not saying that the valid code is an important factor just cause I like to spout the cause of doing things the right way. I discuss this as part of the focus of a site because it is the right way to do things and I've seen it positively affect a web sites ranking in Google and other search engines. The most noticeable change was Google.
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