abostonboy
03-05-2008, 10:51 AM
How important is the code/text ratio? I have gotten so many different answers...
gaydemon
03-05-2008, 11:04 AM
I'm not sure there is a perfect ratio as such, but I do know that reducing code in a page really helps with SEO.
Its fairly straight forward really.
The more code you have, the less likly you are to have the same amount of real content.
Google for example takes into account when they calculate your score the code to text ratio. The more text (i.e content) you have compared to amount of code the higher relevancy your page gets and higher score.
So if you for example use loads of java scripts, tables, inline styles, font styles.. anything that is on a page which is not content, the lower score you will get.
The best way to get a higher ratio is simply to use CSS, that way you will be able to seperate content from design / code. Using external CSS files makes it possible to do away with table designs, fonts classes, layouts etc more or less anything but the bare HTML.
Not only that, but by reducing code you are more likly to make mistakes which might make spiders unable to read your page. Bad HTML is known to break spiders..
Anyway.. there are some good tools here for finding out your ratio:
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/code-to-text-ratio/