Text to Code Ratio & SEO
-
Hi
Has anyone had experience of updating their text to code ratio if its too high & whether this has much impact on SEO performance?
I am trying to prioritise tasks & wondered if this is something which should be higher on my list.
Thank you
-
Brilliant thank you I always get this flagged in my audits & just wanted to make sure I'm not missing anything.
-
The old "text to code ratio" thing was always a myth, Becky, but it keeps popping up periodically.
I asked John Mueller of Google about it directly during a Crawling and Indexing Hangout and his answer was unequivocal, short and sweet:
Paul: Followup to the code density question - does code to text ratio make any difference for ranking?
John Mueller> Paul Thompson: No.
Paul Thompson> John Mueller: Much appreciated. Have been railing against this idea for so long, but folks making this claim keep popping up regularly
Here's the page with the actual comment exchange. Good video in general on crawling/indexing questions.
So - straight from the horse's mouth.
Paul
-
Yes I've only used schema and this was implemented before my time, so I may change the code
Thanks
-
Ah really? That's not good!
Personally I use Schema so can only really comment on that - someone else might have more of a view.
-Andy
-
Ok great, our dev team have messed our schema up so I need to sort this out
Is there a preference over data-vocab vs. schema?
Thanks!
-
I would defiantly be adding schema because there are many benefits to showing Google exactly what is what.
I have seen sites where there has been no change in search positions, and others where there have, but this could as well be about a page being more visible in Google and as such, getting more traffic and eventually a boost from Google as they realise it is a popular result.
Done right, there is no negative to adding Schema
-Andy
-
Great thank you, we're trying to add more content to things like product/category pages but getting the balance is sometimes hard.
I think I have about 600 pages being flagged as having a low text to code ratio, but just wanted to make sure I am focusing on my top priorities when it comes to ranking factors
What do you think about schema? I read that it wasn't a ranking signal. but then saw it's included in the periodic table of seo success signals, under 'do your pages use structured data to enhance listings?
Thanks
-
Hi Becky,
I have never seen a case where this actually makes a difference. However, I have found code issues because of it, but again, nothing that impacted SEO.
I guess that if a page is really large, then this can slow things down - that can impact SEO, but outside of this, I wouldn't be worrying about it.
Just keep an eye on any 'thin' pages that might pop up as a result of seeing these.
-Andy
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Seo for my medium.com site
I have my regular site blog at www.Guideyourhealth.org and a blog on www.medium.com, should I try to get back links for my medium articles as well that are on topics not competing with my site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BuyKratomPowderInfo0 -
Broken images & Rankings
Hi I have seen a big drop in a keyword going from position 3 to out of the top 100. The only thing I can see that went wrong, was an issue with broken images - could this be the reason for the drop? Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
What can you do about negative SEO?
We have a list of 240 domains (look exactly the same) linking to our site for a certain keyword. over 3000 links in total. It means that 50% of our keywords are this keyword and it's not a branded keyword which can affect us in the long term. I have done a WHOIS search and found a name, email and number. Vikas Kumar. I linkedin searched him and found his "legit" SEO site which has EXACTLY the same registration details as the spam sites. I emailed him and he said it would cost 5$ a link removal. I phoned him and he DENIED these emails. He then denied owning these sites etc. We have disavowed them but the anchor text % is still affecting us. Is there anything we can do? I know negative SEO isn't illegal but it's really frustrating. Anyone else had any problems with this type of thing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyB_UK1 -
What recommendations do you have for the SEO of this site?
Hello, Could you glance at this site and let me know if you see anything we could improve upon? www.nlpca.com A couple of notes: We're over-optimized for the term "NLP" on the home page. We're removing the footer links soon. We have 2 locations: San Francisco, CA and Salt Lake City, UT. Our main keyword is "NLP Training" but we would like to rank higher for the keyword "NLP". Also note that we're completely white hat, but we have international site-wide backlinks, and a couple of site-wide backlinks in site's footers - all friends and colleagues of ours.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Recommendation for Small Business SEO
I'm trying to find a company that can provide SEO services for our small business. We have a limited budget, $500 a month or less. We have staff that can do much of the work in terms of correcting content issues, changing content, etc. However, I'm not an SEO expert and we need someone to help us by understanding where we are now and providing ongoing guidance on what we should be doing to improve and also in helping with execution where possible and/or necessary. Can anyone recommend a company that might be able to help us with this within our budget constraints?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Careerbags0 -
SEO Checklist for eCommerce?
Over the past week or so, my eCommerce site has experienced a large drop in organic traffic from Google.I have used analytics to determine that the pages that have seen the biggest losses in traffic are product pages. I know there are so many seo checklists/site audit checklists out there recommending different things, but does anyone have a good checklist (or link to a good checklist) that would fit our situation best? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gordian0 -
Updated My Business Profiles & Still Not Ranking in Local SEO... What Next?
I have used Get Listed and a few other services to update my profiles for my company Health Care Associates (its a home health care agency). http:healthcareassociates.net. I have added pictures, categories, descriptions, key words, etc. and it doesn't seem to help. We are still not ranking in the search engines for "home care grand rapids", "home health care" etc. What else can I do to optimize the local search? Todd
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | t1kuslik0 -
SEO Recommendations
For about 3 years our website was number one in Google.co.uk for our trades main keyphrase which resulted in excellent sales. About 12 months ago that position started to slide downwards and for that keyphrase we are now number 10. We are still at number's 1,2 and 3 for several other keyphrases but ones that result in fewer daily Google searches and resultant sales. I have always added unique content to the site but admit that my blog posts became less than daily over the past 12 months. However I am adding posts as often as I can now, of good length and of unique content. As well as tweaking all our online seo factors I'm trying to add good backlinks as often as possible. I wonder if anyone has been in a similar position and what they did to try and regain their previous position? Colin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NileCruises0