Archives for the 'traffic' CategoryDoes Google care about Validation? (W3C)Does Google care about Validation? (W3C Validation) That is basically why we are here. Though some do not believe in the myth of W3C Validation in correlation to Search Engine rankings in Google, I decided to take the step and try it out for myself. Now, if you have 5 or 7 errors which are simple capitalization errors or scripts which work perfectly fine, then you have nothing to worry about. However, when you have a 1000 errors, chances are the quality of your page is not so great. *Gasp* Whats this? This in itself, should be motivation enough. However, guess what? Even though Google gave w3c a PR10 website, they forgot to follow their own link juice! Google.com has failed validation and has 51 errors with *gasp* No Doctype! Though, before everyone starts freaking out saying they do not think w3c is important, the majority of their errors are the same errors I had almost 500 of. They were capitalization of BR for breaking lines, and not adding quotes for all my variables (because, in all honesty, I prefer not to? - but I figured I should conform to the validator, just this once). They have a bunch of warnings, but who am I to judge. Errors in Numbers, or in Quality A few days ago, this blog (when I got the new theme) had a sad 474 errors according to Validator.W3.Org. 474 errors! Personally, the # isn’t what counts, I can have over 250 errors yet my blog could still be running perfectly; the majority of these errors are my own form of coding style and automatically/accidentally capitalizing code. I was pretty surprised, especially when comparing them to other blogs I have seen that are big hitters, for example:
So what is the Point? What I am trying to get at is instead of theorizing whether or not it will work, realize this: the closer you get to that number 0, the better off your site is in a standard viewing way that could be least harmful to you in the future if they change something around. Like mentioned earlier, if its just capitalization, I’d fix it but try not to lose any sleep over it. If you are not closing your img tags or doing endless breaks, could you really blame yourself if you aren’t ranked #1 in google? I now only have 7-8 errors and those errors are solemnly due to OTHER websites not being validated. Technorati/Entrecard/Mybloglog/BlogCatalog are the things which are causing those errors, but that is ok. They have custom scripts which work, so I am not worried about it. I must admit, I had some pretty bad errors earlier, so checking it over and changing it around was a good thing. The Ultimate Experience: To Test it Myself I have tested this site after I validated it to the best of my ability. I did a few things. A speed test was the first and boy was I ever happy. The overall speed of my site decreased by a few seconds (yet again). I know, some people state that a traffic blog directed towards webmasters shouldn’t worry as most people now have cable modems; despite that, why wouldn’t anyone want a fast website or blog? So yes, my speed has increased which was a major bonus. The next part which is the most interesting part. Usually if I do not submit anything my traffic falls a bit, though after I validated I had more traffic coming in than before. I know, I know, a bad example, however it jumped pretty nicely. It went from 300-400 *unique* visits daily (on average) to about 600-800. This jump also occurred while I have not been able to post for the last 2 days, so this is quite a nice turn out for me. Especially for a blog that is only nearing 2 months old. I might be able to reach my goal after all, now Whether you believe me, or not. I am happy with the results and I am glad that I validated. Some of my errors were rather choppy and fixing them cleaned everything up and made things more organized; so the overall quality of the code to this blog was fixed, if anything. Would you rather not have a blog or site that is free of errors? You decide. It only took me an hour to fix over 460 errors. Edit: its 9:20pm EST of the same day I posted this. This post was written maybe 2 hours prior. I randomly reached a 1000 visitors today, hah! If only I could have that every day Free Directory Submission List of JanuaryI have looked through and compiled a list of free directories for you to take a look at which will might help you out. I double checked these myself and submitted to them to ensure that they were not only free, but whether or not you needed a reciprocal link, as well
To Cut to The Point, there are thousands of Free Directories, These can be found here: | |
With dynamic content being updated every minute, I would not be surprised that they have the random error or two (the majority of which are same bgcolors as background colors in tables, so that does not effect the quality of the site - they are just a bit too thorough, hehe).