Validating your HTML will help ensure that it displays properly on all browsers.

You may not bother with html validation or writing simple and clean code when designing your web site. Later you may find your site is slow loading, appears incorrectly in the main browsers and does not rank well for the major search engines.

Now there are sites that still do rank well even though the html code has many errors. This is because most of the current major browsers are still very forgiving of html mistakes, however future browsers will become more html compliant as the Internet advances. Sites that have not bothered with html code validation will then fall by the wayside or take time and money to be corrected.

That's why you should take the necessary steps NOW to make sure that the code on your web site is validated.

What is HTML validation?

This is the process that analyzes an HTML document in comparison to standard HTML rules, identifying errors and non-standard codes. Web pages are rendered using HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). As with any language there are rules and standards that should be followed.

For example the HTML 4.01 Specification (rules and standards) are available at http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/.

You can check the html validation of your web page by entering your url at: http://validator.w3.org/

Validating your html may mean you are more search engine friendly thus access more visitors, your pages load quicker and your server is under less load, and you can more easily maintain your site.

It will also compliment towards browser compatibility and accessibility.