Although we would have discussed on this time and again on various sub-categories
of this very topic, HTML validation is still found to be the most overlooked process in the whole method of web site design. In fact, this should be on top of the checklist for every Web Designer. We have tried to highlight few merits and myths associated with HTML validation which might assist you in validating HTML on your website.

About the Standards set by The World Wide Web Consortium

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C, http://www.w3c.org)
was established to promote the use of web which is accessible to each and every type of individuals irrespective of culture, education, country, ability, economical conditions, language and any physical conditions. It works to develop common protocols for web which promotes its growth and ensures the interoperability.

Why Validation should be required? HTML Validation is a process of verifying your code against formal set standards. Whether it complies with that or not?Very few web designers would agree that validation is absolutely necessary as it has become habit for any web designer to overlook those HTML validation errors. They even tend to defend in terms of SEO that Google knows about this and Google Search engine even ignores those errors. However, Validation is never a bad idea. The greatest of all benefits is that it even helps to load the page faster, instead of searching for unfinished string of table or other tag, it simply moves forward without throwing exception.One should think of saving and addition of that little extra time which make the pages to load faster. This should form the basis of habit to code with correct use of syntax while HTML coding for any web designer. Once you have got through how HTML actually works, than it would be surely a cake-walk.

Few of the common HTML/XHTML validation errors are listed here:

§ Improper Nesting of Tags

This is a one of the very common error. One should ensure to close tags in the reverse of the order you opened them. For example;

<xyz><abc>your content</abc></xyz>.

§ Missing Alt Tags

You should include alt tags for all your images with a text description so that visitors will still know what the image is about even if they turn off viewing images in their browser.

§ Improper closing of Tags

Just for example <p>your paragraph<p>.Here the end tag should be </p>The above would be validated in HTML, but not XHTML.

Incorporating HTML validation would make it easier for:

- Crawlers (web spider) of various search engines to index your web pages

- To load your webpages faster

- Ensure to make your webpages compatible to be accessed through other devicesthat surf the Web.

- To check through validator about your coding errors.

Ensuring Validation with reference to your Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

In case of any errors in CSS, the layout
of web pages will be affected which would not allow the website to be viewed
correctly in any of the main browsers.

Ensuring Validation with reference to your links

When web crawlers (spiders) cannot index the links on your website they would not be able to find your webpage which might be rich in your targeted keywords. Other than this it would also frustrate your visitors while searching for corresponding information after clicking that link. This would in turn affect your search engine rankings.

The primary goal of every Web Designer should be to ensure an easy website navigation experience to accommodate slightest hiccups of common visitors which can arise due to errors arising out of improper HTML validation while the page is loaded. The obvious question which arises here is how can you call yourself a Web Designer if you produce a pretty web page without professional HTML code? Wouldn’t that make you a Graphic Designer?

Incorporating the valid HTML code ensures that you are meeting the expectations of both the users as well as your clients. It’s never late to make this a habit - Validate your HTML code starting today!