Many of us have heard of the website grader, many of us also know there are but a few standards on the web that everyone collectively cares about. I believe that W3C code validation is one of those concepts we all totally want to care about, but it is not always in the cards.

Like the recent article on the Search Engine Journal by Alan Bleiweiss, I will not be losing any sleep whatsoever if my paragraph tags do not get closed.

Once I worked for a company where they were obsessed with W3C compliance. After working with them for many months I can tell you that the code compliance OCD they had did little more than annoy programmers on staff. Articles and press releases pushed out by their PR firm still outperformed their home grown blog articles – regardless of code perfection. There was no magic there. People get so attached to things that tend to be gimmicks, don’t get me started on social media….

Creating consistently interesting and well linked content will always take you further than miniscule code reviews. We all know what is at stake here, so spend the energy getting content out in a timely manner and packaged effectively. Content can be video, images, blogs, press releases, anything that will contribute to the intellectual property of your website.

We can argue over semantics and we can argue over the latest trends, but in my experience it comes down to having consistent targets for in-house or vendor SEO programs. Total internet dominance is a nice thought, but why not go after some lovely keywords typed in by those looking to purchase your goods or services?