5 replies to this topic

[laura]

I've always been an advocate for linking to javascript & css styles rather than having them in tha page. But if search engines dont read that stuff anyway, what's the difference really (for SEO)?

Could be:
- file size
- line count
- SE's that do read that stuff??
- nothing really - its just cleaner code and thats it...

From what I've read, css pages seem to be doing well in rankings without all the muck in there, evidence (if you take the word of the people who say switching to css has helped) that a clean page will fare better... But I must know the details...

[Shane]

The reasons you want to link to them instead of including them in every single page have nothing to do with SEO. Unless all the JavaScript and CSS comprises a really huge portion of the code, there's little to no search engine impact.

[Jill]

But if search engines dont read that stuff anyway, what's the difference really (for SEO)?

There is none, imo.

[laura]

Many of our pages - actually most of them - have tens to hundreds of lines of javascript & css, even for fairly small amounts of content.

We'll be working to get this all linked, but wondering if it's hurting us in the meantime + how much effort to put into removing javascript & css thats already in thousands of pages...

[Jill]

See my post above.

[qwerty]

The big advantage will hit you in the future. If you spend some time now linking to the CSS and JS instead of having it in the page, you'll never have to deal with that again. When you make a change to the style sheet or the script in the future, it'll automatically get picked up by all the pages, which is a lot easier than changing every page every time you make a change.