Grab the dead horse, it’s time to start beating it again. This time, we’re dragging out the argument of Web Standards and their role (if any) with online marketing. If there’s one thing I can quickly get tired of hearing, it’s ornery and finicky web developers and SEO’s who insist that Web Standards and SEO have nothing to do with each other. Smell the dead horse. Beat the dead horse.
The argument is always the same; if you have a site that with a kajillion inbound links coming in, then the site’s coding is meaningless to ranking. And if the majority of the US web audience uses IE, and the site will render fine in that.. then there’s no need to really get caught up on this. Valid points if status quo is your platform.
Go read this. This is an indicator of things to come, straight from the development team for Internet Explorer 8. What’s it mean? It means they’re attempting to get their shit together on this at last. So what’s it mean for web developers and SEO’s? What’s it mean for the web audience at large?
Uniformity Is On It’s Way… sorta
Nine times out of 10, I could care less what Microsoft is doing when it comes to product offerings to the mass public. But in this case, it’s actually important to pay attention. IE 8 is beginning to observe and respect Web Standards. Think about how this could affect development time for a site, specifically cross browser testing. Think about uniformity in html coding. Think about usability. Yea baby that’s right, that new site looks sexy when the code is treated right. All of a sudden, the possibility of less cross browser testing starts floating into my mind… damn now that’s even more sexy. I might be able to save myself a good hour or 3 in development time. The client might be able to get better turnaround from the whole thing! I might get done with this site sooner!
Sorry.. got a little worked up there.
Regardless of how on target IE8 comes out being, it’s clear what is starting to happen now. Web Standards is becoming more relevant in terms of where web technology is concerned.
What Web Standards REALLY Means
Look, I don’t know what people instantly think of when they hear those 2 words together, but I keep sensing that it represents some sort of archaic and frighteningly complex amount of work and ideology into one’s approach to site development and marketing. To me, this is placing the wagon before the horse. There is a reason why this is good, so focus on that first, and you’ll see how much work it saves you later on.
Web Standards is all about the user experience when you get down to it, just like how usability is a part of SEO. The goal is to make sure that any website that follows the standards will function correctly on all browsers, which again brings us back to the user experience. More specifically, elderly and disabled visitors. Still on the user experience thing here.
User experience in ANY form of online marketing is absolutely vital to the marketing campaign’s odds of failure or success. If you galvanize a visitor for the slightest of reason, you lost them. So adding in some extra coding time on the front end of the development schedule only makes sense in the long run. If I lose them, it’s not going to be because of a site that wouldn’t function properly for them.
I’ll blame someone else for their shitty web copy skills or uber-lame graphics. Yea.. that’s the ticket…
How It Benefits SEO
Clean code makes search engine spiders happy. Compliant code makes the elderly and disabled happy to have a functioning web site serving their interests. They’re visitors too, they convert, their cash is green as well. Compliant code actually reduces code bloat, thus allowing a stronger presence of content versus code. More content versus code means stronger keyword representation per page. See where this is going?
Strong on-page SEO is directly tied into Web Standards compliance. The beauty of this whole thing is that if you code up a clean and compliant site first, odds are the content will be stronger upon site release, thus less time later on tweaking the page to increase it’s on-page SEO qualities. This is something that I can attest to and something I swear by.
Conclusion
Look, I know it’s easier to dismiss something on the get go rather than look into it if you don’t know what it really is. Hell, take me to an Indian restaurant and that’s exactly what you’ll get from me, but once I actually try the dish my whole attitude changes on it. At large, we’re all guilty of being naturally defiant and suspicious of anything that we don’t know anything about that could somehow impact how we do our daily work.
It’s taken me some time to really appreciate the extra work on the front end of development. But when I realized that I inadvertently gave myself the extra time to go try a new place to eat because I wasn’t jumping between computers doing cross-browser testing as much when IE7 rolled out… then I got it. Not all efforts offer up instant rewards, but instant effort is rewarding later on.
