Does clean HTML lead to better Search Engine Rankings?

I've seen numerous posts where people have claimed that good clean HTML leads to better SEO rankings. I've even talked about the lie that of the link between SEO and valid HTML. I've yet to see any studies done which verify this claim and in fact I've even seen evidence to the opposite effect being true. I pointed out how in some competitive markets, the higher the ranking for the site the worse the validation recently in another post. This does not mean that poor code relates to higher … [Read more...]