20 replies to this topic

[olgafb]

Hi,

SEO experts speak a lot about putting on
the page the actual content as sooner as possible,
so for example the less HTML tags there are there,
the better.

How important this actually is?
I ask because we've asked an SEO/designers firm
to change the website template from lots and lots of tables
to something lighter using CSS that can be hidden
to a separate file, and they tell us the advantage
would be so marginal, that there is no point in it.

Could you please tell us if it's important or not?

Thank you,
Olga.

[Jill]

Welcome olgafb !

In my opinion, as far as rankings in the search engines go, it's not at all important.

It's a nice thing to do to make your code better and lighter, but it won't help you rank any better, as far as I can tell.

The search engines know how to ignore superflous code and only bother to read and index the stuff that they know is important to them.

[Trilitech]

I disagree. My website uses ASP.NET which maintains a viewstate hidden filed for maintaining state information. On some pages this got to be very large (about 1/3 of the total page size). After killing this hidden field I saw a fairly large jump in my rankings. I assume it's due to quicker average load time due to smaller page size.

[Jill]

I assume it's due to quicker average load time due to smaller page size.

You know what happens when you assume!

Put it back and see if your rankings go down. I highly doubt it will unless of course that code is taking up 100k of space on your page!

[Trilitech]

Put it back and see if your rankings go down.  I highly doubt it will unless of course that code is taking up 100k of space on your page!

No thanks, I'm not that currious. It was about 45K in size..

[microbe]

As Jill says, don't expect it to transform your SE performance, but I do think that there are benefits to be gained from using CSS to help create a better structure to the content. Table based layouts can mean that the logical text flow is completely disrupted.

You can use it in the same way as a dummy table cell so that your page content precedes the navigation menu in the html. But if your only motive is to achieve that then why not just stick a dummy cell in and save the effort of a rebuild.

On the other hand, if you do go for CSS based design, there are a battery of improvements you can achieve, you can reduce page load times, improve accessibility and, once you have converted, future redesigns can be as simple as adding a new stylesheet.

Go for it!

[digitalplatypus]

The only places I would imagine possible rankings improvement is if you had a table arrangement where an image in one cell had a caption or keyword-rich description in an adjoining cell. Switching to a table-free format wouldn't help rankings for the page, but it could help rankings if someone was doing an image search for that keyword.

If people are likely to do image searches for your keywords, the switch is worth doing. My client has seen a big increase in visitors that searched via image searches since we switched from tables to CSS. But then again, his products are very visually oriented products.

Even if your images are not likely search targets, I still favor the use of CSS for the possible load time improvement. If your file sizes are large, CSS can speed them up by up to a couple of seconds, which helps your visitors. And, after all, what will help our visitors should be the primary concern for us anyway, not what will get the attention of the search engines.

[sufyaaan]

Avoid the use of nested (lots and lots of) tables and unnecessary code. This will improve page load time as well as your search engine positioning. It is seen that if your actual content is buried under hundreds of lines of code, then it will definitely put you website at a disadvantage compared to the top-ranking and highly optimized websites that compete for your keyword.

[Jill]

It is seen that if your actual content is buried under hundreds of lines of code, then it will definitely put you website at a disadvantage compared to the top-ranking and highly optimized websites that compete for your keyword.

I disagree. Can you please show us some evidence of this actually happening?

Just because you may have seen people at forums post that, doesn't actually make it true.

[Scottie]

I'm with Jill- I've seen absolutely no evidence that the code has anything to do with how well the page ranks.

I've seen some really code-heavy, hideously repetitive ,<font> <font> on every line, Word or Powerpoint-created pages that rank really well.

I've never seen a site where cleaning up the code helped the page to rank better.

It does however, make the page load faster and might help with abandonment issues and other usability things, so I do recommend cleaning up bulky code, but not for rankings.

[Tom Philo]

The extra code before context is skipped - if the SE cannot see it then it does not exist. All my JS menus, CSS file runs about 30K on every page before any content appears - but looking via a Lynx browser none of that shows up - just like what a SE will see.

Converting from tables to CSS will just make your life much easier when the site is redesigned or just tweaked - and give you lots of flexibilty to do things that takes loads of time to do now.

Vviewstate is a hidden form field that is used by .NET to maintain state for variables in fields on the page. As such, it is seen by a SE - just like a list item in a dropdown form field. Since it looks like random text - and I've seen some that were 126K in length on a complicated form - using that feature could cause SE indexing problems.

They may see it as stuffed text on a page?

[sufyaaan]

I am sure that messy code can hinder search engine positioning of a site to an extent. I have seen some of the websites with abundant unnecessary code ranking low and when I cleaned up their Html code & separated their CSS and JavaScript in external files, it DID help them to get a little up in the SERPs.

It is something I learned with my personal experience rather than reading somewhere else on the Web!

[Jill]

sufyaaan, you made NO other changes but to clean up their code? You didn't alter the title tags or add keywords ANYWHERE? Just cleaned up the code? And there were no algo changes at the same time that you did this?

Since rankings go up and down a few spots or more all the time, it's often very difficult to know for sure what the true cause is. Maybe it was the clean code, maybe not!

[sufyaaan]

Jill, I did alter the title tags and add keywords along with cleaning up the HTML code.

[olgafb]

Dear all,

Thank you very much for your help.
Now I'll know what's important or not.

I guess I configured something wrong, so I didn't get email notification on your replies, or I would reply much sooner.

Thanks again,
Olga.

P.S. To Chief Botlte Washer Jill: thank you for your warm welcome. I've been reading your articles for a long time now and I'm actually a fan of yours.