Quick Question: Is it Bad for SEO to paste from Word to your CMS?

[keL.A.xT.o]

Hey just a quick question I'm having trouble finding a definitive answer to:

Is the markup that is transferred from Word docs bad for SEO? We are managing to paste it and it looks fine, but the developers are worried that the extra code will be bad for SEO. Does anyone have solution besides pasting into Text Editor and formatting in the CMS? Is this necessary or can we just leave the extra code?

Thank you!

[WebMarkets]

If you are using a great CMS, like DNN, you have the ability to paste as plain text. Then, style the html accordingly. If you dont, prepare to create a lot of junk code and span tags.

[keL.A.xT.o]

ok thanks guys

[chrissmithps]

Yer it's best not to bloat your HTML with to many Spans etc just have the relevant HTML tags. Try the technique that Chris above mentioned.

[Chris.Menke]

You don't want it on your html page.

[keL.A.xT.o]

But in your opinion, is that bloat a problem if it doesn't cause any visual issues?

[keL.A.xT.o]

Thanks for the quick response. I think I understood right.  So you think this would be invisible:

Friday, January 23 vs. Oklahoma City Thunder

Right now we're pasting from the Google Doc to CMS visual editor , and the above is what appears in the text editor. Are all of those and **tags going to be a problem? Or if it appears fine in the visual editor is it safe to leave it as is? We have a lot to paste in and it's already formatted in a Google Doc so i'm trying to save a lot of work. **

[chrissmithps]

I didn't know about that in Word thanks for that advice as well Chris !

[Chris.Menke]

keL.A.xT.o

Give this a try: While you have your Word doc open,  open a new document--but rather than opening a new Word doc, select File | New | Blog Post (and select "register later" if it asks you to open an online account).  Then, copy from your word doc into the blog post, and then, copy and past from the blog post into your CMS.  It should keep your formatting without all the additional Word coding bloat.

[chrissmithps]

I would recommend pasting the Word text into the text editor built into the CMS unless it has a specific import from Word option like in Wordpress.

It can add random bits of text and code, it may not also wrap text in

tags so Google may not detect that paragraph of text, the same applies for headings such as

and

. You can still usually revert back to the visual editor after pasting the code into the text editor mode if you want to format it.