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I browse many sites each day admiring their work, coding techniques, and overall visual appeal. These are a few very popular sites and companies that practice the use of Web Standards.
Web Standards is a methodology and set of rules that one can follow in the creation of their websites. What Web Standards forces the designer to do is use proper and compliant code that keeps the site running clean, fast, and search engine friendly. Using Web Standards isn't a "hack" or a way of doing things differently. Its the way sites are suppose to be created. Over the years, technologies in webdesign have gotten bigger and better. There are now ways of accomplishing visual styles and presentation on the internet that are better then they were in 1995. However, many "web designers" still code their website like its 1995. These are the same people that are either stuck in old habits or live and die by their use of Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia Dreamweaver. Yes, I currently use Dreamweaver, but there is a difference. Many people stay in "design view" which is a mode that doesn't allow you to have complete control over the code and every single tag. I spent 99% of my time in "code view". This allows me to keep the interface clean, the code clean, and allows me to control virtually every element of the site the way its meant to be.
The idea behind using web standards is that you can make 1 copy of a website that can be used across a wide range of viewing options. These options can range from the Latest FireFox Browser (recommended by the way), all the way to a web enabled cell phone.
.The web is full of usefull information that EVERYONE should have access to, not just those who are privileged to have a giant monitor and a super fast computer. No, people with disabilities, people with handicaps, people with PDA's, people with web enabled cell phones, and more should have access to that exact same information, generally speaking of course.
Oh, you are referring to Search Engine Optimization. Well, there are alot of gimmicks and methods out there that promise you the world and more by using them. The problem is, however, that alot of "Search Engine Optimization Experts" are scam artists. They pray on the naive, and in most cases, the naive are those who are technologically challenged.
By following web standards, not only are you making your site accessible to millions of potential viewers with a wide range of impairments, handicaps, and disabilities, but you are making it good for Search Engines to see to.
See, Search Engine bots don't have eyes. They can only read code that makes sense to them. They don't see the wonderful colors that are on your site or the flash animation you just added. They see the code, raw and unfiltered code.
When you remove alot of the useless garbage code that resides on many of the sites today, what happens is you "clear a path" so to speak for a search engine bot to make its way to the important stuff, YOUR CONTENT!.
Think of it this way. Site A is a good site, but it has a ton of code that is old outdated code. Well, for each character that takes up space, that is one more character the user (YOU) has to download. The more characters you have to download, the slower the site will load. Keep in mind, the characters I am talking about are useless code, not text like this paragraph, this is important stuff :)
Well, a search engine comes to Site A and starts going through its code to find the content and keywords. Problem is, it keeps running into extra code that doesn't need to be there, hence slowing it down. Now, if you have enough garbage, it MIGHT just leave early because it can't find anything worthwhile to stay for, even though YOU KNOW you have worthwhile content. I mean, the President of the United States waits in line to read your content, right?
Now, Site B comes along and they are "Standards Compliant" which is a fancy way of saying, "I have clean code, my site is accessible and its fast". Well, the search engine reaches Site B and just whizzes straight to the content. Whose content is going to get looked at quicker and more efficiently? Site A or Site B?
Site B of course
The whole intention behind using Standards is to simply give yourself a strict set of guidelines that will allow you to build your site in a way that works for your audience the most efficient. Not only does it make it easier to download for your visitors, but it becomes cake to update as well. In most cases, when you have a ton of useless code, you spend quite a bit of extra time trying to find what you need. Remember, the less code, the easier it is to get through. So you have leaner code that Search Engines love, your visitors love, and in terms of the work you do on the site, your gonna love.
