How much impact does bad html coding really have on SEO?
-
My client has a site that we are trying to optimise. However the code is really pretty bad.
There are 205 errors showing when W3C validating. The >title>, , <keywords> tags are appearing twice. There is truly excessive javascript. And everything has been put in tables.</keywords>
How much do you think this is really impacting the opportunity to rank? There has been quite a bit of discussion recently along the lines of is on-page SEO impacting anymore.
I just want to be sure before I recommend a whole heap of code changes that could cost her a lot - especially if the impact/return could be miniscule.
Should it all be cleaned up?
Many thanks
-
Hi Chammy,
I inherited a site that reported 3,184 crawl errors in MOZ and a significant number of them (nearly 600) were duplicate titles and content. I have that down to under 1,000 total errors and only 86 critical errors. I have seen my ranking grow pretty substantially and in one week had 6 pages increase over 20 positions in rank. I can share the MOZ Rank Report if you would like to see it.
So yes, it does have an impact.
-
I'm sorry, I don't have any evidence from the user experience point of view,. although I would also be interested to see the results of any studies.
I will say that from a site management/maintenance point of view it makes sense to try and keep the code as clean as possible. I've been involved in project were a considerable chunk of the cost was incurred due to the amount of time and effort that was required to unravel the mess even before any new changes were made!
-
Thanks very much everyone - very helpful.
Good point re page speed - the pages are certainly slow to load so this could well be due to the huge amount of js and bad code.
And yes, think the duplicate tags should be sorted - this shouldn't be difficult.
Has anyone got any tangible results that they've seen as a result of cleaning up js and code?
-
If you've got things like duplicate title and meta-description's going on then I'd certainly take a look at fixing those. Being able to manage these two tags is vital to managing the way your pages will appear in the search results. (And your title tag is an important ranking factor).
Normally, if your page doesn't validate then it's not a major problem and search engines won't penalise you for it. If however, your page is so badly crafted that the html errors, and general page structure makes it difficult for the search engines (and humans) to read your page then you're going to suffer.
The key is to make sure that your site/page content is accessible. How accessible is your page to someone with disabilities, using a screen reader etc.
You've got to make sure that the search engines can understand what your page is about or your page won't be seen as a relevant page for any search terms...
How bad is it? How does google render the page in it's instant previews (you can check this is Google Webmaster tools)
-
I personally don't worry about bad code unless it slows down my page or can possibly make things confusing for search engines or readers.
If the title and meta are appearing twice this could be confusing for search engines, so I would change this. But, if you've got things like an unclosed
here and there I personally don't think that's going to be much of a factor.
-
Invalid code has a small effect on ranking. However, if the invalid code causes usability issues such as load time and or causes a high bounce rate then it can lower your rankings and of course cut back on conversions.
Some of it is a higher priority than others. I would say defo remove the meta keywords.
Combine JS pages. The tables while out of date is not a big issue.
If you have the time and resources then yes it should be cleaned up. If not then clean up major problems
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
-
Query string parameters always bad for SEO?
I've recently put some query string parameters into links leading to a 'request a quote' form which auto-fill the 'product' field with the name of the product that is on the referring product page. E.g. Red Bicycle product page >>> Link to RFQ form contains '?productname=Red-Bicycle' >>>> form's product field's default value becomes 'Red-Bicycle' I know url parameters can lead to keyword cannibalisation and duplicate content, we use sub-domains for our language changer. BUT for something like this, am I potentially damaging our SEO? Appreciate I've not explained this very well. We're using Kentico by the way, so K# macros are a possibility (I use a simple one to fill the form's Default Field).
Technical SEO | | landport0 -
AJAX and SEO
Hello team, Need to bounce a question off the group. We have a site that uses the .NET AJAX tool kit to toggle tabs on a page. Each tab has content and the content is drawn on page load. In other words, the content is not from an AJAX call, it is there from the start. The content sits in DIV tags which the javascript toggles - that's all. My customer hired an "SEO Expert" who is telling them that this content is invisible to search engines. I strongly disagree and we're trying to come to a conclusion. I understand that content rendered async via an AJAX call would not be spidered, however just using the AJAX (Javascript) to switch tabs will not affect the spiders finding the content in the markup. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | ChrisInColorado0 -
Website redesign: impact on SEO rankings?
Hi We're redesigning a website for a client whose SEO rankings are fairly strong, and are driving a good volume of enquiries through their website. We would like to do our best to ensure the redesign has a minimal impact on the rankings but aren't sure if there's anything in particular we should be doing to avert a severe dip in results. The content will be similar on many pages, with the major updates being from 2013 products to the 2014 suite. Layouts and images will, of course be updated, and we're going to do our best to keep the inbound links going to the correct place - any advice here would be much appreciated, too. We'd be really grateful for any suggestions for how to avoid a ranking disaster, and any major pitfalls we should look out for. Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | Kal-SEO0 -
406 Error Code?
Hi, The Crawl Diagnostic section of my campaign reporting is displaying 406 error code on almost all the pdf files of my website. But I can access them normally and there is no problem while doing so. Then, why this error status code? Regards, Shailendra Sial
Technical SEO | | IM_Learner0 -
Passing SEO value from a subdomain
Hi Everybody, I have built a website (http://rugby.europcar.ie) which has gone viral and getting huge amounts of traffic world wide. The problem is, all the Facebook shares, tweets and other social traffic is all referencing the subdomain, and now www.europcar.ie where I want to build rankings. What are my best options for referring this ranking power to my main domain? Thanks in advance Ronan
Technical SEO | | notnem0 -
Restaurant menu SEO: PDF or HTML?
Is it better to use a PDF or hard code restaurant menus (or any document for that matter) in HTML? I want the content to be indexed and thought PDF was the way to go for several reasons, but I wanted to get confirmation on this before I move forward.
Technical SEO | | BostonWright0 -
Global SEO Targeting
Hi, I have a website currently on the domain example.co.uk (.com is not available) I'm looking to enter other markets such as Brazil, Russia - obviously content will need to change to suit the desired market / language. I'm looking for some information on the best practice to enter foreign markets. I was thinking maybe to create individual sites for each location eg: example.br example.ru This way I could localise each site in terms of business directories, content, language etc. Or have my example.co.uk with various languages on it Experience, suggestions are welcomed - thanks.
Technical SEO | | Socialdude0 -
Which is best blogging platform from SEO POV?
I am curious to find out what is the blogging platform of choice for enterprize level companies (employees more than 500, revenue more tan 150M). What would be the best solution from SEO point of view? I have used Wordpress in the past for small companies and feel that is the best. We are currently using Telligent. Is anybody using it?
Technical SEO | | Amjath0