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.
How does badly formatted HTML affect SEO?
-
Our website uses a custom built CMS, but uses a fairly standard WYSIWYG text editor.
I've looked at some of the code it produces, and it's not pretty. My gut feeling tells me that this extra bloat is bad for SEO.
Am I right in thinking that Google doesn't look kindly upon badly formatted and bloated HTML?
Thanks,
James -
Great, thanks for the info. I always thought Google was really hot on compliance, but good to know there is a bit of leeway.
-
James, You might also want to look at the cached version of your page and then click on Text-only version and see if it shows up correctly. If it does, no need to worry from that perspective, but definitely worth checking from a usability, accessibility etc.
-
The main concern is whether or not the spider can read the HTML. If something's broken, the spider may get confused. It's a good idea to check the site's W3C compliance and correct what you can, but I'm certain the search engines don't ding you if you're not perfectly compliant.
The real problems with bad HTML are load times and cross-browser compatibility. (Although, frankly, great HTML can have cross-browser compatibility issues, since IE still refuses to get with the program.) Make sure the site looks good in all major browsers.
-
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.
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
-
Redirection of 100 domain to Main domain affects SEO?
Hi guys, An email software vendor managed by a different area of my company redirected 100 domains used for unsolicited email campaigns to my main domain. These domains are very likely to get blacklisted at some point. My SEO tool now is showing me all those domains as "linking" to my main site as do-follow links. The vendor states that this will not affect my main domain/website in any way. I'm highly concerned. I would appreciate your professional opinion about this. Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anagentile0 -
How will changing my website's page content affect SEO?
Our company is looking to update the content on our existing web pages and I am curious what the best way to roll out these changes are in order to maintain good SEO rankings for certain pages. The infrastructure of the site will not be modified except for maybe adding a couple new pages, but existing domains will stay the same. If the domains are staying the same does it really matter if I just updated 1 page every week or so, versus updating them all at once? Just looking for some insight into how freshening up the content on the back end pages could potentially hurt SEO rankings initially. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bankable1 -
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://moz.com/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 -
Will a disclaimer affect Crawling?
Hello everyone! My German users will have to get a disclaimer according to German laws, now my question is the following: Will a disclaimer affect crawling? What's the best practice to have regarding this? Should I have special care in this? What's the best disclaimer technique? A Plain HTML page? Something overlapping the site? Thank you all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NelsonF0 -
Is Using a Question, Answer Format Appropriate for a Blog? Is a 300 Word Micro Blog An SEO Plus?
My PR agency has suggested a question answer format be incorporated in my blog. They suggest a microblog with a single sentence question and an answer of about 300 words. My blog currently has about 35 posts. I would like to ramp up blog entries to about one or two per week of these "mini blog" posts. The format of the new blog begins as a question with the responses being paragraphs that do not use headings. My concerns are as follows: 1. No headings in an answer of 300 words will fail to provide Google with context regarding the content's meaning. Everything I have read about SEO suggests text be broken up in short sections and that it be divided by headings (preferably H2s). I very much like my agency's concept for a question answer format blog. It provides very practical info for visitors. How can I use it in a manner that supports SEO best practices? 2. According to a reputable SEO firm that has been assisting me, Google does not consider a blog post of less than 600 words to be superior quality. They told me that blog posts of 300 words, from an SEO purpose will not be a great helpful, that the content will not be rich enough to generate incoming links. Is this really the case? What if this abbreviated content is very well written and engaging? If so, is 300 words sufficient? From the visitor's perspective I am not sure they would have the patience to read 600 words when 300 words is more than than enough to answer these basic questions. From a PR perspective I think the shorter content in a question answer format is superior at least for my line of business (commercial real estate brokerage). 3. If 500-600 words is the minimum word count, and headings are necessary, what is the best way to execute a question and answer blog format? The purpose of this blog is to provide very useful info to my visitors while generating incoming links to that will boast my rankings. Thanks in advance for your feedback!!! Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Meta Keywords Good or Bad
Hi All, I've been reading more about the meta keyword tag and why it may not be a good idea to include them on pages and am looking for thoughts/feedback on this idea. If you have employed this tactic, can you give me some insight into any results you saw. If you decided to not employ this tactic, why did you choose not to? I wan to understand all sides of this before employing any changes to my company's websites. Thank you for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | airnwater0 -
Is CloudFlare bad for SEO?
I have been hit by DDoS attacks lately...not on a huge scale, but probably done by some "script kiddies" or competitors of mine. Still, I need to take some action in order to protect my server and my site against all of this spam traffic that is being sent to it. In the process of researching the tools available for defending a website from a DDoS attack, I came across the service offered by CloudFlare.com. According to the CloudFlare website, they protect your site against a DDoS attack by showing users/visitors they find suspicious an interstitial that asks them if they are a real user or a bot...this interstitial contains a Captcha that suspicious users are asked to enter in order to visit the site. I'm just wondering what kind of an effect such an interstitial could have on my Google rankings...I can imagine that such a thing could add to increased click-backs to the SERPs and, if Google detects this, to lower rankings. Has anyone had experience with the DDoS protection services offered by CloudFlare, who can say a word or two regarding any effects this may have on SEO? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | masterfish1 -
Is linking to search results bad for SEO?
If we have pages on our site that link to search results is that a bad thing? Should we set the links to "nofollow"?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0