Web development and maintenance costs can be exorbitant for smaller websites. It is difficult for website owners to pay for the maintenance of highly ranked, Google compliant web pages and still make a decent profit. In many cases, these owners are business focused without the technical know how to understand their developers’ recommendations for the best methods of search engine optimization. Because of this, some developers are able to exploit their clients’ lack of technical acumen by overcharging for unnecessary services.
For years, since 1998, debates have raged over the self-appointed international standards organization called W3C that attempts to set internet construction standards for the industry. This group of about 356 high-power organizations has attempted to claim that all materials on the internet must meet certain formats and styles to ensure compatibility and uniformity of constructions between sites. When coding is created in W3C standards, the Website is called validated by this self-appointed Internet group.
A cry went up against the W3C organization when it was realized that alternative forms of coding and computer languages were being black-balled as inappropriate for the industry by these high-dollar coding creation providers. Myths about Google requiring W3C compatibility for their ranking placements are believed by many people while not being true. Google has over 200 different search engine optimization areas that come into play when Google ranks a site and W3C compatibility is not among these requirements.
Since Google SEO is not related to a page’s validated HTML or strict W3C compliance, any additional development resources spent in these areas can be wasted money. In makes little sense to spend both programmer time and programmer salary towards areas that essentially show no return in page ranking. Because Google doesn’t care whether a web page is validated according to the W3C, the website’s search rankings and user traffic do not improve because more money was spent on making a compliant web page.
The well-known Matt Cutts from the Google Search Quality group that specializes in SEO procedures explains the lack of interest by Google in validation as normal for procedures that most people do not hold an interest in. Since the Google search bots must enter all pages, and most pages not validated to W3C standards, ranking choices are not based upon any efforts at W3C compliance. Today, there is no reason for developers to charge clients extra money for time consuming coding for the W3C validation.