Very true: W3C standards and MOS SEF

[utki]

I came across this snippet on a UK site of a web developer,
http://www.mjbdata.co.uk/news.php

where they were discussing their conversion as a shop to W3C standards.

I particularly liked the bit highlighted below, because it is almost word-for-word what I have myself said many times .

It relates to Mambo, as 4.5 has some issues here. I am aware these are being addressed in 5.0, but the point is worth making again.

[...]
Search engine 'friendliness'

There have been several occasions where I've been asked to help a site perform better on search engines and have had to do little more than remove various code-barriers in order to see referral levels rocket. The [W3C HTML and CSS] standards guidelines are practically a 'how to structure your site for search engines' manual.

If you're a developer and you're thinking about making the switch I can only say "do it". If you're a site owner try mentioning Web Standards and Accessibility to your agency and see what they say. If it's something along the lines of "they're just guidelines and it doesn't really matter" it might be time to shop around.

It's been a constant issue for me how many barriers MOS has in place to the crafting of good (well-formed, compliant and speedy) HTML, and SEF, especially in the hard-coded MOS core files. My issues have been not so much with MOS use of CSS, but for example the really complex table structures you find in the core layout files, and mystifying little things like the complete absence of whole classes of HTML 4 document structure tags such as H1, H2 etc in the core layout files, which help create good old fashioned 'classic' well formed page HTML that search engines also like very much.

I really do look forward to MOS evolving to facilitate standards compliance and SEF more.

[Jinx]

I think you are jumping a bit to quickly to conslusions here. It is indeed true that MOS 4.5, page structuring could be better. Some tweaking of structure is indeed needed to increase SEF, but ... if u are somewhat of a webdevelopper those changes are made very easily.

The strenght of MOS lies in the fact the anyone can handle it. If u are not happy with the way things work just do some core tweaking and voila ... A novice user will not care about SEF, he just wants his site up and running.

It's like u says the point has already made clear, why making it again ?