Worth Modifying Code to Have Text Appear Near Top
-
Our site uses Wordpress. The code is somewhat heavy. The text to code ratio for the home page is only 16%.
Our developer suggests that we modify the code so that the important text appears at the top of the page (without changing the design) so that Google can index it more easily. My developer feels this would be more beneficial for SEO. He believes that reducing the code would create HTML errors. The home page is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com
Is this approach sound?
My developer describes it in the following manner:
| Let me say that I don’t believe the text to code ratio has a significant impact on SEO per se but of course that reducing code, it will reduce page weight therefore it may help to improve ranking.
See Homepage for example, this is the top landing page of your site, therefore it is very relevant to optimize. You can see the first block, from attached it has very little content and too many code. There is almost nothing to do about it, visually that is a very good block, in terms of SEO it isn't. I do not recommend to take it off just for SEO, that will make all pages with lot of text, lack of images and people may go away.
On the other hand, most of the cases we want to improve text code ratio, there is an impact on unexpected BUGs because the code is being changed and this may affect functionality.
I would suggest to spend time on improve the sort-order of the important content inside the code, so we may have similar text code ratio at the end but the important code we need Google to index will be at the very top in the source code, in terms of a very technical approach Google will find the key content faster and that should help to improve the crawling process as search engines read HTML code linearly. This change do not necessarily will affect the HTML, we can achieve it by using style sheet (CSS code) instead, reducing the chance of major BUGs.
Either is our choice, we need to evaluate potential problems, code issues and content impact and also we need to apply changes and wait at least 3-4 weeks to start seeing results. It is a long task.
Let me know your thought about this, we will estimate a task to improve code without affect web design |
-
Hi,
Text > HTML ratio isn't actually a ranking factor and there is no penalty based on this. What you can do with it, is use it as an indicator on how big your pages are and identify those that might be slowing do the loading.
There is no test or correlation that would suggest that reducing this text > HTML ratio will do anything for your rankings.
You need to also try and get away from the thought process that SEO is just about search positions - you need to think about customer acquisitions and page usability as well. For example, if I look at your home page and you were to just add a block of text at the top, then this would reduce the effectiveness of the big messages and search availability at the top. it would push down the main search box and offer nothing of use that anyone would really want to read.
So no, don't add text to the top of the page as this isn't needed. If this were just one big picture with nothing at all there, then it might be a different discussion.
Are your search positions dropping at the moment, or is there a reason that this came about?
I have clients whose Text > HTML ratio is 6-8% and in 1st position for very highly sought after terms. There is a lot more at play.
-Andy
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Review stars not longer appear in SERPs
Our healthcare directory which directs visitors to clinics lost it's review stars in SERPs. Looking for any guidance on how to get this back. https://www.healthyhearing.com/hearing-aids/31312-hearing-improvement-center-llc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stephaniemeyers100 -
Crawling/indexing of near duplicate product pages
Hi, Hope someone can help me out here. This is the current situation: We sell stones/gravel/sand/pebbles etc. for gardens. I will take a type of pebbles and the corresponding pages/URL's to illustrate my question --> black beach pebbles. We have a 'top' product page for black beach pebbles on which you can find different types of quantities (differing from 20kg untill 1600 kg). There is not any search volume related to the different quantities The 'top' page does not link to the pages for the different quantities The content on the pages for the different quantities is not exactly the same (different price + slightly different content). But a lot of the content is the same. Current situation:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMAGARD
- Most pages for the different quantities do not have internal links (about 95%) But the sitemap does contain all of these pages. Because the sitemap contains all these URL's, google frequently crawls them (I checked the logfiles) and has indexed them. Problems: Google spends its time crawling irrelevant pages --> our entire website is not that big, so these quantity URL's kind of double the total number of URL's. Having url's in the sitemap that do not have an internal link is a problem on its own All these pages are indexed so all sorts of gravel/pebbles have near duplicates. My solution: remove these URL's from the sitemap --> that will probably stop Google from regularly crawling these pages Putting a canonical on the quantity pages pointing to the top-product page. --> that will hopefully remove the irrelevant (no search volume) near duplicates from the index My questions: To be able to see the canonical, google will need to crawl these pages. Will google still do that after removing them from the sitemap? Do you agree that these pages are near duplicates and that it is best to remove them from the index? A few of these quantity pages do have intenral links (a few procent of them) because of a sale campaign. So there will be some (not much) internal links pointing to non-canonical pages. Would that be a problem? Thanks a lot in advance for your help! Best!1 -
Top 3 concepts in modern SEO - best resources
Hello, What are the top 3 concepts in modern SEO in your honest opinion, and what are your best sources for learning about them. For example, #1 10X Content This Whiteboard Friday
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
I have 6 URL errors in GSC showing a 500 error code. How do I fix?
I am not sure how to fix some errors that are popping up in Google Search Console. The response codes showing are all: 500 error code I need some advice as to how to fix these. What are my options?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pmull0 -
Suspected hacking - Google has detected that some of your pages may contain hidden text or cloaking
I got below message from google, But I did not see any hidden text, Please check it. http://www.astrologerravisharma.com/: Suspected hacking Google has detected that some of your pages may contain hidden text or cloaking, techniques that are outside our Webmaster Guidelines. Specifically, we detected that your site may have been modified by a third party. Typically, the offending party gains access to an insecure directory that has open permissions. Many times, they will upload files or modify existing ones, which then show up as spam in our index. Sample URLs: http://www.astrologerravisharma.com/ http://www.astrologerravisharma.com/about-us/ http://www.astrologerravisharma.com/achievements/ Recommended action Clean up the hacked content so that your site meets Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward0 -
Ranking 1st on Google, but not in top 50 on Bing and Yahoo?
Hi Mozzers, Roughly 2 weeks ago we were ranked:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
#2 on Google for "African American Business Owner Mailing Lists"
#2 on Bing
#2 on Yahoo Now we are ranked
#1 on Google #50 on Bing
#50 on Yahoo I noticed a lot of our other keywords improved on Google during this period but vanished from the other 2 search engines. Other KWs include
"Apartment Owner Mailing Lists " (#4 on Google)
"Community College Mailing Lists (#3 on Google)
etc. What gives?
Thoughts?0 -
Internal Anchor Text - Partial or Exact Match Does It Matter?
When linking internally on an ecommerce site between pages and from a sitemap, is partial or exact match on the anchor text a significant factor? If it matters to Google, which is a better practice to use? I found plenty of info on external links, but precious little on internal links (which suggests it doesn't matter enough to worry about).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads0 -
Multiple anchor text links
Hi. I wanted to ask about having multiple text links to an internal page from the same page. So I have a section title on my home page which will vary with each article. It may say "Healthiest Cat Foods" as the title then offer a snippet and finally offer a "continue reading..." anchor text. The title is a great link to the article while the "continue reading..." is another link to the same article. I like the to keep the title link because it is perfect anchor text. I like to keep the "continue reading..." because it seems helpful for users. I have read that search engines will only count the first link to an article which is fine as I only want the first one to count anyway. What I am wondering is do I lose any page rank because I added the second link? Does that second link hurt me in any way?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NikkiGaul0