Location of Content within the Code Structure

[artdivision]

Hi guys,
When working with advanced modern websites it many times means that in order to achieve the look and feel we end up with pages that has almost 1000 lines of code or more. In some cases it is impossible to avoid it if we are to reach the Client's visual and technical specifications.

Say the page is 1000 lines of code, and our content only starts at line 450 onwards, will that have an impact from a Google crawlability, hence affect our SEO making it harder to rank?

Thoughts?

Dan.

[Dezzign]

Yes it's most definitely a factor in rankings but as you say, to achieve visual perfection on a budget (using a theme and not coding from scratch) you do end up with a lot of code.

I always ensure my sites score as high as possible in speed tests, and the Html, Css, and Java are all properly minified (when possible), and that's about all you can do.

If the site scores at least a 90/100 in the page speed test then Google are not going to hold back a site that looks good and has great content because it has a lot of code in the site.

Most of all that code is for the browsers to render the site correctly but good Seo is mainly dependant on the content contained within certain tags. I just checked one of my sites, and it has 600 lines of code before my H1 tag, thanks to the revolution slider. But the site still ranks top 3 for many keywords and still achieves a 93/100 on page speed test.

All things equal, custom built flat html sites will always rank better than themes php template sites, but it's quite rare that all things are equal. Those 400 lines of code may be holding you back by 1 spot or 5 spots, but it's nothing that some good links or great content can't fix. I understand your point though, as it's a painfully slow process to fix that code.

[ofw12387]

if you have a high html/content rate, the google robot will need less time to crawl your site content.

In my opinion is an important SEO on page factor that´s why i´m always trying to:

• avoid javascript inlines

• have a clean & simple HTML code

• optimize the code deleting unnecesary characters like spaces.

Last december, I changed my wordpress theme to one with a better/clean code, after 4/5 weeks I improve considerably my rankings, coincidence? I don´t think so

Br

//Oliver