Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Low text-HTML ratios
-
Are low text-HTML ratios still a negative SEO ranking factor?
Today I ran SEMRUSH site audit that showed 344 out of 345 pages on our website (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) show an text-HTML ratio that ranges from 8% to 22%. This is characterized as a warning on SEMRUSH. This error did not exist in April when the last SEMRUSH audit was conducted.
Is it worthwhile to try to externalize code in order to improve this ratio? Or to add text (major project on a site of this size)? These pages generally have 200-400 words of text.
Certain URLs, for example www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/nycofficespaceforlease more text, yet it still shows an text-HTML ratio of only 16%.
We recently upgraded to the WordPress 4.2.1. Could this have bloated the code (CSS etcetera) to the detriment of the text-HTML ratio?
If Google has become accustomed to more complex code, is this a ratio that I can ignore.
Thanks, Alan
-
Hi Cynthia,
A text-to-HTML ratio of between 15 and 70 percent is generally considered ideal.
Try this tool, http://tools.seochat.com/tools/code-to-text-ratio/
It is a pretty good tool, but like Andy stated, the best bet is to focus on improving the content on your site, followed by running these pages through https://validator.w3.org/ and follow whatever recommendations possible to reduce code bloat etc...
Cheers,
Kevin
-
We have the same issues on two websites, and I have had difficulty determining what is actually wrong or causing this? Is there another tool that may give more light to what SEMrush is "finding" as low text-html ratios? I am not sure what to address on some of the pages that SEMrush has flagged that as a warning.
Thanks, Cindy
-
Hi,
First of all, you should be aware that SEMRush changed their algorithm a week or so ago and a client of mine also saw the same issue. They have really set the bar low when it comes to showing this factor now, to the point I don't agree with it.
However, I would use this as a signal just to allow you to see if the content is lacking a little on the page, rather than worrying if it will affect SEO. Of course, if you have a page with no content, this is bad for both usability and SEO, but text / HTML ratio isn't a direct ranking signal. See it as more of an indicator to see if the code can be cleaned and to help increase page load times.
There is never any harm in trying to speed up your pages either. If you think that some of the code is slowing things down, then look at how this can be improved. You can always do more to better the user experience, and with that will come indirect SEO improvements.
Write amazing content for your pages (where possible) and don't worry too much about text / HTML ratio. I know which one Google will be paying more attention to
-Andy
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO friendly H1 tag with 2 text lines
Hi everyone, I am trying to add span tags in H1, break tag on 2 lines and style each line of H1 differently: Example: Line 1Line 2 I might add a smaller font for line 2 as well... Is this SEO friendly? Will crawlers read entire text or can interfere and block it. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgvsiteadmin0 -
Probably basic, but how to use image Title and Alt Text - and confusing advice from Moz!
I've been doing SEO on my business's site for years and have got good results. I've always used image Titles and Alt Text text. Our blog posts are image-intensive, often with 100-200 pictures (not surprising since we're photographers). For any given blog post, I've tended to have a uniform image Title for each image and then a more specialised Alt Text tag giving a description. A typical image on one of our blog posts would be like this: Image filename: wedding-photography-at-so-and-so-venue-001.jpg .... 002, 003 etc Image Title Attribute: Wedding Photography at So-And-So-Venue by Our-Company-Name - this would be the same for every image in the blog post. Alternative Text: Bride and groom exchanging vows during wedding ceremony at so-and-so-venue - this would be tailed for each image. So my question is - is this right? The Moz help page for image SEO is actually incorrect in one aspect: https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/ugc/10-tips-for-optimizing-your-images-for-search "Alt text (short for “alternative text”) is used to highlight the identity of an image when you hover over it with your mouse cursor. It also shows as text to all users when there are problems rendering the image." This is not the case. Hovering over the image in Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Opera ALL display the Image Title, NOT Alt Text. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robandsarahgillespie0 -
Moving html site to wordpress and 301 redirect from index.htm to index.php or just www.example.com
I found page duplicate content when using Moz crawl tool, see below. http://www.example.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gozmoz
Page Authority 40
Linking Root Domains 31
External Link Count 138
Internal Link Count 18
Status Code 200
1 duplicate http://www.example.com/index.htm
Page Authority 19
Linking Root Domains 1
External Link Count 0
Internal Link Count 15
Status Code 200
1 duplicate I have recently transfered my old html site to wordpress.
To keep the urls the same I am using a plugin which appends .htm at the end of each page. My old site home page was index.htm. I have created index.htm in wordpress as well but now there is a conflict of duplicate content. I am using latest post as my home page which is index.php Question 1.
Should I also use redirect 301 im htaccess file to transfer index.htm page authority (19) to www.example.com If yes, do I use
Redirect 301 /index.htm http://www.example.com/index.php
or
Redirect 301 /index.htm http://www.example.com Question 2
Should I change my "Home" menu link to http://www.example.com instead of http://www.example.com/index.htm that would fix the duplicate content, as indx.htm does not exist anymore. Is there a better option? Thanks0 -
How to outrank a directory listing with high DA but low PA?
My site is at 4th place, 3 places above it is a gumtree (similar to yell, yelp) listing. How can you figure out how difficult it would be outrank those pages? I mean obviously the pages would have low PA and they are top based on the high DA of the site. This also seems to go back to keyword research and difficulty, when I'm doing keyword research and I see a wikipedia site in top 5 rank, or a yell.com or perhaps an article in forbes.com outranks your site. Typically the problem seems to be Google giving a lot of credit to these pages rankings based on the high DA rather than PA of the pages. How would you gauge the difficulty of that keyword then if the competition are pages with very high DA which is impossible to compete with but low PA? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | magusara2 -
Anyways to pull anchor text?
Hi guys, So basically i have a list of URLs/Domains and there backlinks (example: http://s29.postimg.org/ujxm0c4lj/screenshot_677.jpg) but i'm missing anchor text. Can anyone recommend any tools which can scan a backlink, locate the URL/Domain on the page and then pull the anchor text? Cheers, Chris <colgroup><col width="548"><col width="884"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright
| | |1 -
Will obfuscating HTML have a bad effect on my ranking?
I would like to obfuscate my HTML so that people do not see that I used a Template on my site. Does obfuscating HTML have a bad effect on the ranking in google? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RWW0 -
How much does dirty html/css etc impact SEO?
Good Morning! I have been trying to clean up this website and half the time I can't even edit our content without breaking the WYSIWYG Editor. Which leads me to the next question. How much, if at all, is this impacting our SEO. To my knowledge this isn't directly causing any broken pages for the viewer, but still, it certainly concerns me. I found this post on Moz from last year: http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/community/q/how-much-impact-does-bad-html-coding-really-have-on-seo We have a slightly different set of code problems but still wanted to revisit this question and see if anything has changed. I also can't imagine that all this broken/extra code is helping our page load properly. Thanks everybody!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
Does Google read texts when display=none?
Hi, In our e-commerce site on category pages we have pagination (i.e toshiba laptops page 1, page 2 etc.). We implement it with rel='next' and 'prev' etc. On the first page of each category we display a header with lots of text information. This header is removed on the following pages using display='none'. I wondered if since it is only a css display game google might still read it and consider duplicated content. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0