Can good code (markup) improve your rankings?

[Webnauts]

I picked up some parts of this page http://www.seomoz.org/articles/searc...-factors.php#2 and I would like to hear what you think:

Can valid code improve your rankings?

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Invalid Code
The use of code which may not be readable or spiderable to search engine bots, or which creates infinite loops or other hazards could affect rankings directly, or by causing lost indexing of pages by search engines.

Bad markup => poor content semantics/structure.

Ammon Johns
Depends on the extent of the problem. Sending a spider into a loop would not be good and would likely prevent indexing of that page and others.
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W3C Validation

The W3C organization of web standards issues requirements for validation. These standards are used by many websites to construct "proper" markup in the HTML document type of their choice. Whether search engines measure proper validation is up for debate, but could be considered a ranking factor.

Bill Slawski
Validation by itself is unlikely to be a ranking factor, however, a valid, error free page following standards may rank better than one that isn't because a defined DTD and charset may reduce the possibility of errors in interpreting a page.

Dan Thies
Does any search engine's home page validate yet?

Danny Sullivan
i wish you had a zero, because that's what I'd be voting here.

DazzlinDonna
Only useful in making sure spiders can index the page. May have some merit with MSN.

EGOL
Has anybody tested this to see. Sounds like something very easy to test and settle all questions.

Todd Malicoat
Would be pretty hard to do from an SE standpoint, but would logically be a factor.

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If reading the above you come to the conclusion that valid code can improve your rankings, why endless of SEOs don't care about good markup?

Before someone will say here that not every error can hurt, I would like to hear first, which errors DO hurt.

The whole idea is, that I just thought of trying to setup a list of errors that can hurt crawlability and rankings, for the people who do not want or care to have their code validated against the W3C guidelines.

Thanks. :)

[nelsonez]

The use of code which may not be readable or spiderable to search engine bots, or which creates infinite loops or other hazards could affect rankings directly, or by causing lost indexing of pages by search engines.

I would change this quote from "could" to WILL. If the code is so bad that the Google spider can't make it through the entire page then of course the bad code will hurt the site's ranking.

However, a site does NOT need to be W3C valid to be fully indexed by search engine spiders. And I bet anyone on the webpro forum to prove me wrong on this.

The following code may not be semantically proper but it is both W3C valid and it will NOT affect a search engine spider.





</p>

Semantically proper code, W3C valid code, and spider friendly code are not mutually exclusive.

Eric

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by nelsonez

I would change this quote from "could" to WILL. If the code is so bad that the Google spider can't make it through the entire page then of course the bad code will hurt the site's ranking.

Thanks Eric for the feedback. And by the way those quotes are not mine. They are from the site I mentioned above.

I know that HTML validation is not necessary for SEO, but I am asking here, how can someone tell which errors can really hurt crawlability and rankings.

[nelsonez]

Hi Webnauts,

No worries. I realized you were just throwing different quotes out there. It is an interesting topic that you bring up. Not that we could actually do this experiement but it would be interesting to find out if which of two essentially identical sites, one that was completely W3C compliant and the other was not, would rank higher.

I don't doubt that the W3C compliant site would rank first but I just don't know how much this one criteria out of the dozens that make up the SE algorithms would really matter.

Eric

[Webnauts]

Eric do you know Google's Accessible Search? http://www.seoworkers.com/seo-articl...le-search.html
Do you know that accessibility requires valid HTML? And did you know that accessibility for the blind requires alt attributes?

I am aware that they are still working on this project, but here is a real issue I would like to mention:

With the Google Search I am ranking today for the keyphrase "seo article" 32 and with Google's Accessible Search I am ranking for this keyphrase "27".

Isn't that strange?

So whats next?

[Webnauts]

I guess it would be a great idae to watch this video of Matt Cutts (Google Engineer): http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...0&q=Matt+Cutts

[thegypsy]

Uhhh it's pretty standard stuff that compliance won't help rankings in any of the major engines. Even YaH prattled on about it at PubCon... so IMHO it is a no go..

The use of code which may not be readable or spiderable to search engine bots, or which creates infinite loops or other hazards could affect rankings directly, or by causing lost indexing of pages by search engines.

Sure, if a page won't render.. but that's an extreme case

As for the ranking anomalies.. well they have different algos silly.. of course it is different.

[incrediblehelp]

Well said "thegypsy"

[Webnauts]

So it seems like those guys do not know what they are talking about. Right? Hm, and I thought they are SEO experts!

[thegypsy]

Hiya Incredible - How ya been?

Webnauts - Certainly some great minds, that's just an older document. Certainly written before Matt came out with the Code v SEO stuff...

Just another case of needing to keep one's SEO fresh.. and I like to DATE things I write so people know how seriously to take it

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by thegypsy

Hiya Incredible - How ya been?

Webnauts - Certainly some great minds, that's just an older document. Certainly written before Matt came out with the Code v SEO stuff...

Just another case of needing to keep one's SEO fresh.. and I like to DATE things I write so people know how seriously to take it

That is pure crap! If I have outdated information on my site, I update it or I get rid of it. Too risky if the users do not look at the date published, as I might haven't seen either.

Do you call such crap marketing and promotion?

And do you want to say here the search engines are going backwards?

Very interesting to know. As I work with 100% valid markup, I am scared that it will have negative effects after all. Or? Should I go dirty markup? What would you advise me to do?

[Narasinha]

Originally Posted by thegypsy

Webnauts - Certainly some great minds, that's just an older document. Certainly written before Matt came out with the Code v SEO stuff...

Just another case of needing to keep one's SEO fresh.. and I like to DATE things I write so people know how seriously to take it

So Matt Cutts has the final word in all SEO matters? I guess everyone else can just hang up their books and web sites. Matt seems to have cornered the market in all things SEO. Take his words as gospel and ignore everything else.

Does it ever occur to anyone that google's algorithms, as well as those of Yahoo! and MSN and AltaVista, etc., etc., continue to grow and evolve? Do you think IE went through a major upgrade (and well past due) simply to add some special abilities to the browser? IE 7's major achievements over IE 6 are better support for web standards. SEO is just the tip of the iceburg. SEO is not the penultimate goal of all web design. Who cares if you get a PR of 8 and have loads of IBLs if half of your visitors get frustrated with your page and leave?

The standards exist. They aren't going to go away. If you want to design your pages with the same code that I used to write in 1995, then by all means, go right ahead. When IE version 10, and Firefox 9, and the browser on your cell phone can no longer make very much sense of your web sites, then that is left for you to deal with. As for myself, I prefer to keep my code a little more up to date, regardless of anything Google or any other search engine thinks. Contrary to the belief of many, Google does not have the final word in web standards.

[fletchermak]

Yes dear code always does matter and helps to increase searchability.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by fletchermak

Yes dear code always does matter and helps to increase searchability.

Hey, do you know what you said? There are some guys here who will kill you for that. LOL

[meinking22]

Originally Posted by fletchermak

Yes dear code always does matter and helps to increase searchability.

For that reason alone, good markup is worth taking seriously. Additionally, the Google patent does have an emphasis on it and so do the Webmaster Guidelines. While bad code may not get you penalized, it could deter the bots, which in essence...penalizes you...

Steve

[Chris]

Originally Posted by Narasinha

So Matt Cutts has the final word in all SEO matters? I guess everyone else can just hang up their books and web sites. Matt seems to have cornered the market in all things SEO. Take his words as gospel and ignore everything else.

when it comes to GOOGLE'S index, yes, i would tend to listen to google's lead engineer. and since they are the dominant resource for these matters, you can vicariously extend this thinking to include search if you'd like.

Originally Posted by Narasinha

Does it ever occur to anyone that google's algorithms, as well as those of Yahoo! and MSN and AltaVista, etc., etc., continue to grow and evolve? ...

and most of these search engines do a good job of informing the public of these evolutions through the use of blogs, etc. however, you mentioned AltaVista... um, are they even relevant anymore (although they do have an excellent mp3 search)?

Originally Posted by Narasinha

The standards exist. They aren't going to go away. If you want to design your pages with the same code that I used to write in 1995, then by all means, go right ahead. When IE version 10, and Firefox 9, and the browser on your cell phone can no longer make very much sense of your web sites, then that is left for you to deal with. As for myself, I prefer to keep my code a little more up to date, regardless of anything Google or any other search engine thinks. Contrary to the belief of many, Google does not have the final word in web standards.

no one is advocating poor bloated code design. neither incredible or gyspy have done so. i think they are taking into account that a site will work. of course you don't want a site on the web with script and HTML errors out of the wazoo. however, they don't live by everything the W3C hands down either. do you really think amazon.com conforms to W3C standards?

[Narasinha]

Originally Posted by Chris

no one is advocating poor bloated code design. neither incredible or gyspy have done so. i think they are taking into account that a site will work. of course you don't want a site on the web with script and HTML errors out of the wazoo. however, they don't live by everything the W3C hands down either. do you really think amazon.com conforms to W3C standards?

Unfortunately, no, I know that amazon's site does not conform to standards, though I wish that they, and other nationally (and internationally) known commercial sites would take further steps to conforming to the standards. As it stands, there truly is no great obvious incentive to do so. If Google's algorithms change in this fashion in the future, I believe that would finally provide such an incentive. Money talks, b*****it walks.

But Chris... Wildcats?!!? Go Boilermakers! (Yeah, I'm in Fighting Illini country now, but I grew up in Lafayette and still have to root for ol' Purdue.)

[melb]

Poor code doesn't matter if you have a lot of links to the site, hence Amazon/CNN/etc having no problems. BUT if you have a site with few/no links, poor code can greatly impact SE results.

I had Amazon affiliate links that did not validate well on one site and the page was pretty well ignored by SEs. Used a newer version of Amazon links that did validate OK and the page jumped to near the top for the keywords - only change invalid to valid code.

[thegypsy]

Originally Posted by Narasinha

So Matt Cutts has the final word in all SEO matters? I guess everyone else can just hang up their books and web sites. Matt seems to have cornered the market in all things SEO. Take his words as gospel and ignore everything else.

Does it ever occur to anyone that google's algorithms, as well as those of Yahoo! and MSN and AltaVista, etc., etc., continue to grow and evolve? Do you think IE went through a major upgrade (and well past due) simply to add some special abilities to the browser? IE 7's major achievements over IE 6 are better support for web standards. SEO is just the tip of the iceburg. SEO is not the penultimate goal of all web design. Who cares if you get a PR of 8 and have loads of IBLs if half of your visitors get frustrated with your page and leave?

The standards exist. They aren't going to go away. If you want to design your pages with the same code that I used to write in 1995, then by all means, go right ahead. When IE version 10, and Firefox 9, and the browser on your cell phone can no longer make very much sense of your web sites, then that is left for you to deal with. As for myself, I prefer to keep my code a little more up to date, regardless of anything Google or any other search engine thinks. Contrary to the belief of many, Google does not have the final word in web standards.

Well it's great but we can dig up a whack of patents a play with what 'might be' or what 'may be' some day.. that's not a reality for me. At this point they say it doesn't matter.. so that is the stance I work with. There is precious little to go on as it is... so if they actually throw us a bone.. I am grabbin it up and burrying it in the back yard

<<< Dave scoots out the back door>>> woof woof

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by thegypsy

Well it's great but we can dig up a whack of patents a play with what 'might be' or what 'may be' some day.. that's not a reality for me. At this point they say it doesn't matter.. so that is the stance I work with. There is precious little to go on as it is... so if they actually throw us a bone.. I am grabbin it up and burrying it in the back yard

<<< Dave scoots out the back door>>> woof woof

I think I will scoot out the back door: woof woof too now.

1. How could you check what Google really likes and what Google really hates? At their guidelines, or?
What do their guidelines say?

Check for broken links and correct HTML.
Source: http://www.google.com/support/webmas...y?answer=35769[/b]

You would say Google does not penalize for bad HTML, because they cannot check it. But doesn't that make you think at all? Is it impossible that Google is working on that?

2. What is so horrible? That I have better ranking results in Google Accessible Search than the ordinary Google Search? That I might will have the chance to be found by 10% more potential customers?

Any further questions or comments please?

[brian.mark]

We went through and validated both of our sites. We found no increase in Google traffic / rankings because of that.

Yahoo was quite different, though. We only had 7,000 pages indexed. We've now got well over 30,000 pages indexed, and that was the only thing we changed.

Unindexed pages can't rank, so in that sense, yes it does affect rankings. Google, not so much. Yahoo, yes. At least in my experience.

Brian.

[Webnauts]

Very cool info Brian! Thanks for sharing. :)

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Well said "thegypsy"

So what do you think after Brians post? Or isn't Yahoo a major search engine?

[incrediblehelp]

Yes I have heard website owners that clean up there code perform better on Yahoo. This is the second time now. I guess if one of my clients don't rank well on Yahoo I will take that into consideration.

As you well know most of my comments on this topic have been Google specific.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by melb

Poor code doesn't matter if you have a lot of links to the site, hence Amazon/CNN/etc having no problems. BUT if you have a site with few/no links, poor code can greatly impact SE results.

I had Amazon affiliate links that did not validate well on one site and the page was pretty well ignored by SEs. Used a newer version of Amazon links that did validate OK and the page jumped to near the top for the keywords - only change invalid to valid code.

Thank for sharing this great info melb! :)

[Narasinha]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Yes I have heard website owners that clean up there code perform better on Yahoo. This is the second time now. I guess if one of my clients don't rank well on Yahoo I will take that into consideration.

Jaan, wouldn't it be much easier to build all of your sites with standards-compliant code in the first place, in order to prevent the extra work of rewriting code if something is wrong with Yahoo's results?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Yes I have heard website owners that clean up there code perform better on Yahoo. This is the second time now. I guess if one of my clients don't rank well on Yahoo I will take that into consideration.

As you well know most of my comments on this topic have been Google specific.

1. Do you also provide SEO services only for Yahoo?
2. Maybe you missed the fact that this discussion in the Search Engine Optimization forum.

But no problem Jaan. I got the message. :)

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Can good code (markup) improve your rankings?

Yes definitely and may be more in the future.

[thegypsy]

Originally Posted by kgun

Yes definitely and may be more in the future.

Evidence please kind sir... or is it IMHO?

[Webnauts]

Ask Brian. On the 1st page of this discussion he said:

Originally Posted by Brian

We went through and validated both of our sites. We found no increase in Google traffic / rankings because of that.

Yahoo was quite different, though. We only had 7,000 pages indexed. We've now got well over 30,000 pages indexed, and that was the only thing we changed.

Unindexed pages can't rank, so in that sense, yes it does affect rankings. Google, not so much. Yahoo, yes. At least in my experience.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Very interesting to know. As I work with 100% valid markup, I am scared that it will have negative effects after all. Or? Should I go dirty markup? What would you advise me to do?

Important question. Can 100 % be bad? To be more precise, are there examples where 100 % valid code is bad code and invalid code may be better?

MO:
Make your code valid or so close to 100 % valid as possible.

[Webnauts]

A member of the forums oisv.com quoted:

There has been a lot of debate about whether using valid markup helps your search rankings. My feeling (based on a lot of page tweaking and result watching) is that it does have an impact, but is not the only factor by far. I wrote an article about this a while back.

I spoke with a search engineer from Yahoo about it and he told me that while valid markup is one of the 'signals of quality' they look for, that alone cannot get a site to the coveted Top 10.

Google and Yahoo don't validate because frankly, they don't have to. Adding the step of making sure each pages validates is just a waste of time to them. Plus they change the markup on the result pages frequently to prevent screen scrapers from pillaging the results.

Until browsers force people to use web standards, they won't. Until the majority of websites are made with valid standards compliant code, there is no real reason for the browser authors to force standards compliance. It's a catch 22 we'll be stuck in for a long time.

Does his post make any sense to you?

[kgun]

Yes.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by kgun

Important question. Can 100 % be bad? To be more precise, are there examples where 100 % valid code is bad code and invalid code may be better?

MO:
Make your code valid or so close to 100 % valid as possible.

Well I was just wondering, after reading endless of posts around against clean and valid markup. That was all. :)

[Ne0]

Originally Posted by brian.mark

We went through and validated both of our sites. We found no increase in Google traffic / rankings because of that.

Yahoo was quite different, though. We only had 7,000 pages indexed. We've now got well over 30,000 pages indexed, and that was the only thing we changed.

Unindexed pages can't rank, so in that sense, yes it does affect rankings. Google, not so much. Yahoo, yes. At least in my experience.

Brian.

Well said Brian... I've seen this on a few separate client sites and concur!

So this seems almost worth a test using a few pages not yet in the Yahoo index eh?

.02