W3C Compliance - Still a ranking factor in 2015?

[SanjidaKazi]

Hi All,

In regards to W3C Compliance, is this still an important ranking factor? Has anyone become compliant and seen a noticeable difference in rankings?

Cheers,

[Alick300]

Hi Jamie,

Neither it was nor it is an important ranking factor. No I haven't seen any noticeable difference .

List of Important SEO ranking Factors @ http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors

I'm also sharing Matt Cutts video on this @ http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2297152/does-google-penalize-for-invalid-html-matt-cutts-says-no

Thanks

[RobertFisher]

Jamie,

Years ago everyone put W3C compliant on every website they seemed to produce. I have never seen it have an impact in rankings and would be interested to see if anyone has any reasonable evidence it did. So, I have to agree with Alick300 and suggest you follow that moz guide as it is a really good basis for SEO and ranking.

Best

Robert

[SanjidaKazi]

Hi Alick

Thanks for the info and video ill check it out now.

[SanjidaKazi]

Cheers Robert, I haven't seen any evidence online either but I thought it worth asking.

Have a good one

[MattAntonino]

I agree with the other responses with a caveat.  W3C compliance is not a ranking factor - except when it's a massive problem.  If your site has 50 errors and 10 warnings, not a ranking factor.  If you have 600 errors, it actually may affect your rankings - but I don't think it's "compliance" related as much as it is "your site sucks and Google knows it" related.

So a massive amount of errors may actually look like a ranking issue - but it's not a factor, I think.

[SanjidaKazi]

lolol @ Google knows it.

Cheers Matt I get what you mean, I was thinking maybe Google had a green flag system letting it know the site is compliant and giving it a boost. Seems as though it's just guidelines after all.

Have a good one bud.

[Matt-Williamson]

Hi Jamie,

I was asked this question recently by a client and my response was that as long as your site can be crawled efficiently and read by Google having a w3c compliant site won't make a difference to rankings. I also pointed out to them that amazon.co.uk - has nearly 400 errors  and  over 100 warning when you run it through w3c validation tool but they do well in the SERPs!