Valid Markup
Posted by admin on June 16, 2009 under SEO Tips, Web Design | 
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The Benefits of Validating your XHTML & CSS
Future proofing your website
XHTML and CSS coding standards are defined with future developments in mind. With these coding standards all future releases of web browsers and other web content readers will be based.
So, by having a webpage that has valid markup you are future proofing your website for future releases of browsers, search engine robots, screen readers etc.
Without doing this you run the risk that your webpages will not render correctly in future versions of browsers. Imagine how many visitors you could lose if a future version of Internet Explorer (currently has 80% use world-wide) cannot render your webpage. So, by employing a small amount of time upfront to validate your markup could save you loads compared to rewriting your website because users cannot browse your website.
Search engines
By having valid markup and semantic html you will be presenting a webpage to the search engines that they will be able to fully interpret and index correctly. With invalid markup a search engine could easily attempt to index a webpage but get confused about what is content and what is markup and therefore not all of your content will be indexed. This will of course have a knock on to you SEO as your ranking may be lower that it otherwise would.
Accessibility
Making your website accessible to all users and devices will bring unlimited advantages to you. By alienating disabled users or mobile devices you could be losing untold numbers of visitors to your website. By having valid markup you are paving the way to the Single A level of WCAG, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
Achieving valid markup
There are plenty of free online tools available to make the process of validation easier and I have listed just a few here.
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator
