The W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium and basically, since 1994 the W3C has provided the guidelines by which websites and web pages should be structured and created. The rules they outline are based on the "best practices" and while websites don't have to comply to be viewed correctly in Internet Explorer and other popular browsers that cater to incorrect design practices, there are a number of compelling reasons to make sure that you or your designer ensure that the W3C guidelines are followed and that your site is brought into compliance.
A few reasons to make your website W3C compliant are:
- Compliance helps to ensure accessibility for disabled visitors. W3C compliant websites can be easily read and navigated by users with screen. These are used by blind and partially sighted visitors as well as people with dyslexia.
- Compliance helps to ensure that your website is accessible from a number of devices; from different browsers to the growing number of surfers using PDA's and cellular phones.
- Compliance will also help insure that regardless of the browser, resolution, device, etc. that your website will look and function in the same or at least a very similar fashion.
There are also a number of Search Engine Optimisation reasons why you should consider making your web site W3C compliant.
- W3C compliant websites are also by their very compliance marked up in a semantic fashion which search engines can interpret and weigh without confusion. The content-to-code ratio is also skewed in the direction where it needs to be while forcing all of the information in the page to be made accessible, thus favoring the content.
- Additionally compliance will, by necessity, make your web site easily spidered and allow greater control over which portions of your content are given more weight by the search engines.
This translates into higher positions in the search engine results and more visitors to your web site.
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