As long as the code produced is readable in a web browser then it being bloated shouldn't have much of an impact in terms of SEO. The code bloats only downside is that it might slow the page load which will have impact on SEO. Remember crawlers like Google bot essentially look at the page content in terms of textual content, what labels (alt tags etc), images and links are on there not how neatly it is presented or whether it is valid markup or not. I would take a look at your page speed otherwise I would worry as long as it is able to fulfil all the basic on page requirements such as headers, page titles etc.

Just to reiterate this - I have worked with CMS driven sites that aren't W3C compliant and don't produce the nicest html, but have loaded fast and ranked in the top 3 for competitive terms.

As far as I am aware Google doesn't index urls with a hashtag as this is pointing to an internal part of the page - essentially it will only index the url without the hashtag, so it isn't creating a new URL. However to be certain of this I would stick a site: query with your url including the hashtag and see if it appears with the hashtag, if, as I expect it doesn't then you shouldn't have an issue with duplicate content under two urls. As far as them being ok in relation to your SEO efforts I don't see why there should be a negative impact as you are essentially making your site more user-friendly and pointing to a specific part of the page that is already indexed - your are not duplicating that part of the page by creating an internal anchor to that specific content.

Just for your confirmation I can tell you I have a page that uses an internal anchor (#) and when you do a site search in Google this page doesn't appear. When you search for it without the # it does...

I wouldn't use meta keywords either, as there is no real value in them in terms of ranking - Bing actually uses them to help identify spammers. As Moosa mentioned; if you put too much effort into them it is a quick and easy way for competitors to identify what keywords you are targeting.

I think this recent Q&A would be of interest to you -

http://www.seomoz.org/q/meta-keywords-should-we-use-them-or-not

I completely agree with the fact that those of us that do this everyday aren't the best to ask in regards to this, though our office is a mixed bunch, not all marketeers.

In general I have noticed that more and more users that I have come across are becoming more aware of what they are clicking on in the SERPs. They are filtering results based on their own judgments, not just trusting the search engines as they may have done in the past. Though as you say with the growth of the last five years there is probably one hell of a lot of people that trust in the SERPs whatever they serve for a query. In relation to this suspicion; I think page titles and descriptions influence this more than EMDs.

It would be an interesting study to see the impact of hyphens(the amount) in EMDs and their click through rates from the SERPs.

As we have both attested, though, we have had success with EMD with hyphens, though this is obviously down to many factors in relation to SEO strategy we have employed, not just a good domain.

Thanks for your input it is very valuable.

Here is to the day that we don't have to make a domain registrar rich!

Very interesting response Robert, with some very good and valid points - though I think you would want a expert in order to carry out that change, although that might not be the right place to find them - a very nice example of why hyphens, in the right situation, are very valid.

When you have worked with hyphens and domains what is the largest number of hyphens on an EMD you have worked on?

This has set off an interesting discussion in the office with the feeling that a domain with multiple hyphens is less trusted by the majority here when they appear in the serps, therefore receiving less click-throughs.

In general do you think users have been educated to be suspicious of domains that appear long and and exact match with hyphens and that is why it is believed to be spammy by some?

The most I have worked on in regards to EMDs with hyphens is one and this dominated the SERPs for the targeted terms.

Do you think EMDs with multiple hyphens possibly set off alarm bells with Google in regard to over-optimization rather than efficient labelling of a resource online, in particular since Penguin?

Hi Rohan,

You can use hyphens in sub-domains, however when using hyphens in relation to any domain or sub-domain I tend to stay away from them, if possible, as they tend to be related to spam practices, especially with multiple hyphens. I think you will find this SeoMoz best practice in relation to domains a good guide as to what is the best tactic to take - http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/domain

Hope this helps

William is right meta keywords is essentially a worthless tag that is no longer used by most search engines, as it was a method abused by spammers in the past (in the days of the meta crawler when you could type any term in and still be served porn). Bing still takes them into account as a signal for spammers not ranking!

http://searchengineland.com/the-meta-keywords-tag-lives-at-bing-why-only-spammers-should-use-it-96874

I always look at competitors meta-data in order to give me a quick overview of their targetted terms, so I would think about ditching them if I were you, though don't panic if you don't., just don't give precious time to them..