Again while checking out my friends site I came across another great article that you should read if you have some time.

A common question that is asked on is “why should I get my website validated”? This article will explain why in the simplest way possible.

First things first, what is a Validated Website?

To put it in simplest terms, it’s when your site is tested to make sure that it runs smoothly and fits with today’s rigorous standards for the web. It uses CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to organize your content and fixes and ties up any loose ends you may have still on your site.

But in the end we have to have the WC3 tell us what the definition is, as they are the most prominent leaders of Validation, and I quote from their site!

“Validation is a process of checking your documents against a formal Standard, such as those published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for HTML and XML-derived Web document types. It serves a similar purpose to spell checking and proofreading for grammar and syntax, but is much more precise and reliable than any of those processes because it is dealing with precisely-specified machine languages, not with nebulously-defined human natural language.”

Accessibility

Not validating your site leaves it open for problems for any web browsers it was not made for (most likely with Opera, Netscape, or other low used browsers). Internet Explorer may fix these little problems and bugs but other browsers such as Opera may display the code as is, this could potentially be a problem. So pretty much, Validation fixes your code up nice and tidy so that (with maybe the exception of IE) people with browsers can enjoy your website the way you wanted them to!

Convenience

If you want to Validate your site, you’re going to have to start using certain things like ALT tags on your images and photos. This helps individuals who have difficulty comprehending what they’re seeing on the site, mostly for those who have difficulty navigating the internet in the first place. In a nutshell, Validation is what is going to help those who do, in fact, have learning disabilities or simply a tough time with the web. Although having a Validated website might not fix all your Accessibility problems, it sure does help to fix them. Others will thank you as well. There’s nothing worse than going somewhere that can’t cater to your needs.

Search Engine Optimization

Any website that is clean from bugs and errors is also more easily found by large search engines such as Yahoo or Google. So if you clean up your site, it will be more easily found and thus that means more customers/viewers. Another point about getting your site validated is that, sometimes the search engine could be focusing on parts of your site that aren’t quite as developed as the rest which can result in you losing customers since it may just focus in on your TOS and not your home page.

Quicker Page Loading

Typical Websites had always used ungodly amounts of tables to organize the content and even the structure of the site. So the purpose of CSS takes away the tables needed to manage the content and manages it alone without even having to bother with the structure of the site, which speeds up the loading time for any site by seconds. It also takes care of any lose coding that the browser may have problems with, freeing up extra time as well.

How can I validate?

What you’re going to want to do first is check your own site to see if it needs Validation (see the steps down below).

Next, you’re going to need to decide whether or not your website really needs Validation or not. But don’t forget that now there is a legal factor you must obey in making your site accessible.

Finally, check out some SEO companies to see if they’ll help you in finishing off your validation and tying up loose ends. It’s not unheard of to just remake an entire new site, rather than redoing the one you’ve already made. This isn’t a problem though, perhaps this is just what your aging site needs.

How to validate your website using Validation Tools:

1. Go to the W3C website and look for the Validator tool.
2. Fill out the options and click submit.
3. If your site is validated, sit back and watch the traffic flow.

Source: http://www.thedevnetwork.com/forums/showthread.php?t=849

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