Charlottesville SEO Web Development

Updated: October 08, 2009

Web Standards: A Competitive Edge

Web standards compliance enables your site to outperform your competitors' web sites in the search engines and empowers you to target customers your competitors can't.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Standards based web design and development is perfectly suited for search-engine-friendly programming, also known as on-page search engine optimization, for two reasons. First, web standards dictate that presentation coding must be removed from content, which makes it easier for the search engines to index web content. Second, web standards compliance requires semantic coding, which establishes content structure and provides web developers a platform to specify the hierarchy of data on each page to the search engines.

Well structured sites that comply with W3C web standards outperform comparable table-based web sites on all major search engines. See our SEO results.

Does this mean your competitors' table-based sites can not achieve good search results? No. It just means they will have to invest more time and money on web site promotion, formally known as Search Engine Marketing (SEM), to achieve a comparable flow of web traffic as a semantic, standards-compliant web site will attain "naturally".

Learn more about search engine optimization (SEO) or about our SEO services.

If you are ready to build a search-engine-friendly web site or convert an existing site into one that outperforms your competition, please call Nick Stone today in Central Virginia at 434-284-2840.

Web Accessibility Initiative Compliance (WAI)

Standards compliant web developers build sites that are handicap accessible. Even if the developer doesn't target a particular set of guidelines, following the standards improves accessibility. Accessibility is not only compassionate and socially responsible, it is also cost effective.

Target Corporation agreed to establish a $6 million fund as part of their settlement with The National Federation Of The Blind (external link) in a high profile class action regarding Target's alleged failure to provide web access to disabled visitors attempting to access target.com using screen reader technology. Target's costs to defend and settle, as well as their public relations nightmare could all have been avoided with handicap accessible web coding at a tiny fraction of the cost.

Ensuring your site is accessible to handicapped visitors can also increase market share. For example, it is estimated that 7% of all men in the United States are color blind. (external link) According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 19.3% of US citizens age 5 and older have some type of disability. (external link)

For an example of how web standards compliance enhances accessibility, compare the discouraged but still widely used practice of using tables to establish web page layout. The W3C standards call for developers to replace this inefficient technique by coding web presentation elements with cascading style sheets (CSS). Failing to adhere to this standard can make it more difficult for handicapped visitors to comprehend or navigate your site. In fact, table layouts are often inaccessible to visually impaired visitors, (external link) particularly those using a screen reader.

Please visit our web accessibility resources page for links to the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) site, web accessibility testing resources, and more.

Cross Browser Compatibility

A web page that renders as intended on a standards-compliant browser such as Mozilla Firefox or Apple Safari may appear distorted on a less compliant browser.

Your web pages also may not appear the same when viewed on a newer version of a browser. For example, when Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7, many sites built to render well on version 6 required programming modifications.

Web developers adhering to W3C standards build sites less likely to exhibit either type of cross-browser viewing anomaly.

Note: Microsoft has taken important steps to bring Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) closer to W3C standards compliance. If you are still using IE6, please consider a free upgrade to Microsoft IE8 or Mozilla Firefox. (external link)

Cross Platform Compatibility

Computer operating systems can also affect the way web pages are rendered. A web page may render well on an Apple computer but appear distorted on a computer running Windows, or Linux, or Unix.

W3C standards-compliant programming minimizes cross-platform compatibility problems.

Cross Device Compatibility

Alternative devices, such as cell phones and printers, can alter the way a page appears. Web standards address these issues.

Forward Compatibility

Operating systems, browsers, and viewing devices are all evolving. A web site that was built to render on Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 5 may not render correctly on IE 6 or IE 7. Programming standards and techniques are evolving, too.

Professionally developed, W3C standards-compliant programming increases the life span of your site and minimizes the need for programming modifications to maintain compatibility in future viewing environments.