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  4. How does badly formatted HTML affect SEO?

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How does badly formatted HTML affect SEO?

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
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  • OptiBacUK
    OptiBacUK last edited by Sep 18, 2012, 12:11 PM

    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

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • OptiBacUK
      OptiBacUK @CMC-SD last edited by Sep 20, 2012, 9:09 AM Sep 20, 2012, 9:09 AM

      Great, thanks for the info. I always thought Google was really hot on compliance, but good to know there is a bit of leeway.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • NakulGoyal
        NakulGoyal last edited by Sep 18, 2012, 5:51 PM Sep 18, 2012, 5:51 PM

        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.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • CMC-SD
          CMC-SD last edited by Sep 20, 2012, 9:07 AM Sep 18, 2012, 12:41 PM

          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.

          OptiBacUK 1 Reply Last reply Sep 20, 2012, 9:09 AM Reply Quote 2
          • Matt-Williamson
            Matt-Williamson last edited by Sep 19, 2012, 4:45 AM Sep 18, 2012, 12:31 PM

            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.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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