What are Web Standards?
Once upon a time, web developers coded their web pages and used the “if it looks good in the browser, it’s good!” gauge. Those days are long gone (thankfully). Today, we code the pages and test our code against a validation service, such as the tool offered by the W3C Consortium, the organization responsible for publishing these standards. This service checks the code and gives a pass/fail result. This is a must-have tool for any web developer to ensure their code is up to par. I use this tool on every project, large or small.

Why do we need them?
Creating web pages to these standards simplifies development and promotes clean code. Clean code means better accessibility for people with special needs that depend on devices to assist them for accessing and reading content in web sites. Additionally, adhering to web standards increases the longevity of the code and ensures greater web browser compatibility. It’s a win-win scenario!

Google loves clean code! Search engines are able to do their job more effectively when they can easily access the content in the web pages. Web pages with excessive code hinder this process. Here are some tips from Google to help get your pages easily indexed.

Does your website stack up to web standards?