Previously in this blog, we introduced Web Standards from the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, and discussed how coding mistakes can creep into your web pages and affect how visitors see your pages. We also showed you how you can use the W3C Validator to check your pages for errors and how the Validator displays your coding errors so you can correct them easily.

We also stressed the fact that web pages that conform to W3C Standards serve to enhance accessibility and provide for long-term compatibility. In other words, if you want your pages to be seen by the largest audience for the longest possible time, then validating your pages to assure they conform to W3C standards is the way to go.

Today we will cover another subject having to do with your pages adhering to W3C standards and how it might serve to help with your search engine rankings.

Currently, there is some controversy regarding search engine ranking and pages that conform to W3C standards. Many web developers will tell you that W3C compliance has nothing to do with your site ranking stating that search engine spiders don’t see web pages the same way that people do. Others will tell you that W3C compliance is extremely important to rankings because compliant code makes it easy for search engine spiders to spider your pages and glean more content from them.

Our position is that pages that validate with current W3C standards CAN perform better after they are brought to compliance. We’ve seen it happen. The bottom line is, if you’re concerned about increasing your search engine rank having your site validate to W3C standards is a necessity.

We believe that the real estate industry is a highly competitive business. Our clients need every advantage they can get when it comes to the Internet. So, if a difference in search engine ranking can be realized by simply adhering to current web standards, then why would we hamper our customers business by not following those standards?

Google states in their Webmaster Help Group that pages in compliance with current standards have a slight advantage when it comes to ranking by being more accessible by visitors with disabilities or folks accessing your pages on portable or other devices. Since this can improve the popularity of your site, it may increase incoming links to your site, which can help with your ranking and traffic.

That’s not to say that small errors in your HTML markup will penalize your rankings with Google or any other search engine. It certainly won’t make your site invisible to search engine spiders. But, it can disrupt the important process of parsing all your pages for important content.

There are many factors that contribute to search engine ranking and simply assuring that your pages are compliant with W3C standards won’t suddenly push you from non-existent to a top-ten position. But, compliance can help increase the ranking of a site that meets all the other SEO criteria.

How many times have you read a newspaper or a magazine article and discovered a spelling or grammar error? Actually, especially with newspaper writers, it happens quite frequently. Newspaper writers are under strict deadlines and mistakes are often overlooked when it’s crunchtime.

But, a grammatical error can easily change the whole meaning of a sentence or paragraph.

Web developers can sometimes make the same mistakes - only the errors show up in the actual HTML code that makes your pages visible in your prospect’s browser. In this instance, those little errors can lead to problems on how your pages display on different computer screens, operating systems, and web browsers.

Many web developers today make use of a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web creation software, such as Dreamweaver or the old Microsoft FrontPage program. These tools can create web pages in an environment that displays the pages the developer is working on as they should appear in a browser. WYSIWYG page creation programs are popular and they work well because the person building your site can save a lot of time verses coding pages by simply writing the proper code in a text editor.

While the use of WYSIWYG web page software can save time and effort, there is a trade off. They can sometimes make errors in the HTML they generate. (The Web Page Editor we provide our customers produces code that is compliant with current HTML standards.)

HTML is the language that web pages are written in. Your visitor’s web browsers take this HTML code and render it into a web page.

Writing HTML is like writing English. A mistake in grammar can make the end result something completely different than what was intended. In the case of HTML errors, your web pages can look fine in Internet Explorer, but be completely trashed if a visitor is using Firefox or the Mac browser, Safari.

And, just as with English, there is a standard of vocabulary when using HTML to create web pages. An organization known as the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, is responsible for setting the acceptable guidelines for the proper use of HTML and other web technologies. In other words, these are the guys who create the rules for proper HTML language. They create standards that, if followed by web developers, will assure that web pages should load, look, and act exactly the same whether they are viewed in Internet Explorer, Firefox, or any other web browser in use today.

Why would making sure your web pages conform to these standards benefit your business?

For starters, it assures that those web pages you spent who knows how long, or how much, creating can be seen by anyone who visits your site. Even if 90 percent of your visitors use Internet Explorer, that still leaves 10 percent of those visiting your site using a browser other than IE. With the real estate industry being what it is today, does it make sense to leave out 10 percent of your prospects?

Secondly, true professionals who create web pages for a living take pride in their knowledge and skills. They will make certain that your pages are viewable to EVERY potential client who visits your site. For this to happen, professional web developers will verify that your site adheres to the current web standards.

How can you check to see if your site is W3C valid?

Simply visit the W3C Validator and enter your website address in the form at the top of the page. In a few seconds, the automated validator will return the results of you home page.

If your page doesn’t validate, the Validator will tell you exactly where to look for errors. You’ll need to correct them and revalidate your page.

In our next entry, we’ll discuss the relationship between W3C validation and search engines.