How Do W3C Validation Errors Affect SEO?

In the past, a person had to at least know the HTML markup language in order to create a quality website. Nowadays, site owners with a limited budget can create websites in two clicks without even knowing a single code.

Sounds great? Maybe. But this only means that no one controls the HTML. As a result, W3C errors appear in the code, and this harms SEO.

But don’t panic. Let’s take a closer look at what a W3C validation error is.

W3C validation explained

The World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, allows users to check HTML and XHTML documents for properly formatted markup. That is, you check your website’s code and determine if it adheres to formatting standards.

If suddenly you do not have this check, then it is automatically considered that your website has errors, rather than low traffic, and readability problems.

Reasons to Validate Your HTML

Interestingly, although this check is very important, Google pays no attention to it. In reality, most sites do not pass validation, and the Internet works fine.

But if Google doesn’t care, why then validate your HTML? Here are 6 reasons:

1. It can affect the crawl rate

According to Google, if your crawling and indexing speed drops, then you may have incorrect HTML.

Use a Googlebot to analyze your page. If it can’t scan it, you obviously have some kind of error.

2. It can impact browser compatibility

That is, if you select the correct HTML, then your website will be rendered correctly for all browsers.

Clean and valid HTML is a good insurance policy, and using CSS (programming language Cascading Style Sheets) will separate presentation from content and allow your webpages to load faster.

3. It allows pages to function everywhere

If your HTML is wrong, your browser will probably work very strangely. It doesn’t happen very often, but in most cases, the webpage will not display correctly.

4. It improves the user experience

Google views user experience as a ranking signal.

The W3C validation will improve the usability and functionality of the website, and, as a result, users will experience fewer errors when displaying the site in a browser. And since your page will have a positive impact on the user experience, it will have an impact on SEO as well.

5. Invalid HTML can break hreflang

The hreflang attribute is a technical solution for websites that have the same content in multiple languages. With hreflang you can specify that one webpage is for the Americans and the other is for the British, or you can create two different pages for the Germans and the Austrians.

If you have an invalid code in the head section of a webpage, it may interfere with rendering the webpage and, as a result, will not index hreflang tags.

6. It is helpful for Google Shopping Ads

If you have a product that you want to advertise on Google Shopping, you’d better use  valid HTML. Google Merchant Center support also checks your HTML for validity, thereby determining if the price is displayed correctly.

Again, if you have problems with the functionality of the site, this can indirectly affect your rankings.