At BrightFire, we understand the importance of building websites that are optimized for usability, conversions, and search engine optimization. In order to deliver sites that excel in all areas, we rely on our team’s in-depth knowledge and a suite of tools that allows us to continuously investigate and improve our products and services.
The W3C HTML and CSS validation tools are just two of the many tools we use to improve our websites. The reports produced by these tools are a tremendous help to developers, but not every item found on these reports requires a change to a website.
In fact, “fixing” some of the reported errors or warnings could have a negative effect on a website’s performance. Some modern techniques, such as lazy-loading, may not be valid in the eyes of W3C’s reporting tools; however, they are considered best practices and preferred by search engines like Google.
Our approach to W3C HTML and CSS validation is to score as highly as possible without sacrificing user experience or site performance.
We periodically audit our platform with regard to W3C HTML and CSS validation guidelines. All of our customers benefit from optimizations that we regularly make to our platform; however, individual site customizations and third-party integration may affect the scores found on these reporting tools.
With all this being said, we do not guarantee that our sites are 100% W3C HTML or CSS valid, nor do we believe that they need to be.
One myth is that W3C HTML and CSS validation affects search engine optimization (SEO). However, this is a myth, and Google has confirmed that W3C HTML and CSS validation is not a ranking factor. If a website has severe W3C HTML and CSS validation issues, it may be difficult for Google to properly crawl the website. Of course, your BrightFire website does not fall into this category.
It’s worth noting that it is very rare for any site to reach 100% validation. Even businesses that provide W3C HTML and CSS validation services rarely have a perfectly validated website themselves. As an example, code provided directly from Facebook to track ad conversions when using Facebook Ads is invalid in the eyes of W3C HTML validation. This code, however, is installed daily on thousands of websites.
As W3C HTML and CSS validation continue to evolve, we will continue to periodically review how our sites perform in this regard, and we’ll continue to make W3C HTML and CSS validation improvements a priority.