Choose a W3C compliant theme that respects the web standards WordPress adheres to. This is not mandatory, but it will certainly help your search engine positioning in the near future. There are SEOs who debate the statement above, but I strongly recommend that you keep your blog W3C compliant. Compliant sites are usually accessible, or at least close to being accessible. Even Google treats accessible sites preferentially (see Google Accessible Search). In time, as the search algorithms change, the search engines will start paying more attention to factors people tend to ignore today: usability, accessibility and W3C compliance. These are all signs of quality, and since the search engines want to deliver quality results for their users, W3C compliant sites will eventually rise above those that do not adhere to web standards.
To keep a site W3C compliant you have to take care that at least the html code validates. Of course, this will be difficult for those with limited html coding skills, and while it will not keep the site error free, the WordPress formatting setting “WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically” will keep the number of errors to a minimum. Be careful, with this option selected. Embedding YouTube videos and other scripts could generate blog template formatting problems. You have to know how to correctly embed videos to solve this problem. To select “WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically” go to Settings > Writing as in the image below:
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