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The World Wide Web Consortium (also called W3C) is the administrative organization which drafted the rules by which your site and its web pages are supposed to be structured when they are under development. These rules, though not mandatory for your site to be viewed correctly in browsers, are considered part and parcel of the so-called 'knowledge of best practices'. It is in the best interests of your site that you comply with the W3C best practices.

The three main reasons for websites to comply with the W3C regulations ' first, the disabled get guaranteed access when you comply; second, the site you created can be accessible from different devices and software; and lastly, compliance assures you that your site gets a fairly standardized appearance and functionality regardless of where it is viewed.

To be compliant, you are supposed to lessen your page code so that the keyword-laden content will take precedence. Compliance allows search engine spiders to view your site more readily, while giving you enhanced control over which site pages will gain more importance among the search engines.

To create a site which is W3C-compliant, you need to get a site designer who can re-format the site so that it meets W3C standards. You should also anticipate having to adjust to these same standards so that you can sustain compliance.

To pursue compliance yourself, you can take advantage of a variety of resources. One great resource would be the Firefox browser's Web Developer extension. To use this resource, you have to install Firefox at the start before attempting to install its extension. The nice part about using this Web Developer extension is that it makes it easier for you to pursue W3C compliance. You can also view a list that tells you which errors you have made plus what solutions are needed to correct your errors. This extension allows for CSS, XHTML, and HTML as well as for Accessibility compliance testing.
There are more detailed steps you should follow so that you meet W3C compliance.

1. Try to download the Firefox browser. You won't regret doing this because Firefox is a very good browser.

2. Install its Web Developer extension. You gain access to the testing tools easily from this point.

3. You can now bookmark these resources.

4. When all has been installed, then attempt to run their tests at your personal website. It is advisable to have a sample site around to examine which happens to be W3C compliant already ' this allows you to examine that sample site's code when necessary.

5. When trying to do validation, consider pursuing CSS validation first, followed by HTML validation then by XHTML validation. This reduces the amount of frustration for you, especially if you're new at this and have a standard site. This becomes more important too if your site happens to be rather large.

6. Accessibility standards also have to be implemented to make your site Accessibility compliant. This means simplifying or even eliminating your code then re-formatting it into CSS format. If you don't know CSS formatting, then you should learn or at least hire someone who is familiar with it. You may find there are some things about CSS that will make your site more pleasant and even interesting to look at. CSS can be a bit difficult to absorb at the start but gets easier to use over time.

Once your site becomes W3C-compliant, you will find your website can be accommodated on a greater variety of browsers. This is growing in importance nowadays because many new browsers are becoming more popular with a variety of users. At the same time, your website will have less code to clutter it up so that search engines will give it higher ranking in search results.

One word of caution though ' in the website and search engine paradigm, getting the top ranking in search results seems to be the true test of SEO friendliness. However, you should not expect that being W3C compliant will automatically render your website more popular among search engines. As SEO techniques become increasingly accepted by many website owners, you may actually find competition for ranking from search engines to heat up even more.

This means simply that there is no magic solution that will give your site instant popularity among Internet users and importance on search results of most if not all search engines. You should exert all effort to use the right methods to get better rankings. Once you reach the top page ranking in the search results, then it becomes vital that you do everything legitimate to stay at that level so that no other website comes along, and bumps you off the list.