pageoneresults - 7:59 pm on Jul 30, 2003 (gmt 0)

My personal feelings on this are that the web is moving forward with standards and we need to follow them as closely as we can, if not adhere to them strictly.

Since SEO is close to being a dead sport, we as existing SEOs/SEMs need to consider alternative niche markets to target. I'm finding that there is a very large untapped market when it comes to designing sites properly and with valid markup. As accessibility issues heat up, and they have been for some time, more and more companies are starting to consider their options. And if you travel down the accessibility road, validation is key in the overall scheme of things.

Start thinking about the future of your careers in this industry. It is no longer SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as they say but more SEM (Search Engine Marketing). One of the many benefits you can add to your marketing portfolio is the claim of building W3C compliant web sites.

There are still many who feel that it is all a waste of time. Why validate if the site still displays properly in their favorite browser? Who cares about the rest? Who cares that your biggest prospect ever could not view your site because they are using a standards compliant browser? Who cares that the indexing spider just skipped 50k of your core content on the home page because it encountered an error it could not compensate for?

I care, and so do my clients. They may pay a high premium for the attention to detail and final results but, they now truly understand what I've been trying to explain to them over the past couple of years. ;)