Is Code-To-Text Ratio A Google Ranking Factor? - Semalt Tips
Having an excellent code-to-text ratio when placing content on a webpage is important in making your website visible. Adding SEO snippets like a meta description, alt tags, and title tags can make a big difference in your site's visibility on search engines.
This ratio reveals the percentage of your website that should be text. But you might not have thought about how the amount of code on that page compared to the amount of text can affect your ranking in search engine result pages (SERP).
If you are wondering whether code-to-text ratio is a google ranking factor, keep reading as we provide insights that will help you understand whether this ratio is vital in SEO.
What is Code-To Text ratio?
Code-to-text ratio is the percentage of text on a website as it relates to the source code of the website. Every website consists of text and the source code that sets up the website's layout in the background.
Taking into consideration how many characters are used in the source code (backend) and the text (frontend), a percentage ratio can be found that is used in search engine optimization as a text-to-code ratio.
The background of the connection between text and source code consists of two things. First, a valid source code and HTML should be used as the markup language to make sure the documents follow W3C's suggestions.
For example, there should only be one H1 heading in each HTML document. In the same way, you should use other design elements like subheadings, paragraphs, and other markups like bold or italic text.
The source code should also show the content clearly. HTML tags structure the content rather than form them, so little source code should be used. Also, it is necessary to keep both content and markup separate and use CSS to format HTML documents. This can cut down on the number of characters in the source code.
On the other side of this code-to-text ratio are the users. Both the content and design should be geared toward the user. Users are more likely to stay on a page if the markup's content and style encourage them. They remain longer on pages that provide a great user experience.
Another important factor about a webpage is that it should give users precisely what they want. But search engines usually think that websites can only give users the information they need if they have a certain amount of text on them.
The Code to Text Ratio shows how much of a web page consists of actual text. The code is the HTML code built into the page, while the text is what is written on the page. Therefore, a higher text shows a better user experience to HTML ratio.
A high ratio of text to code will increase the chances that your website will rank higher in search engine results. Most search engines use the code-to-text ratio, so having a higher text-to-HTML percentage on your site gives you an edge over your competitors across all search engines.
When too much HTML code is added to a web page, it can cause a visitor's browser to load longer. This can create a bad user experience since most people who visit websites don't like it when pages take a long time to load.
This is why you need SEO professionals like Semalt to handle your site. With years of experience in this industry, we can pull text from paragraphs, anchor text from HTML code on a page, and then figure out the content ratio.
Does Search Engines Value Code-To-Text Ratios When Ranking Sites
There's no doubt that the code-to-text ratio affects the user experience of your website. Sites with too much code will take longer to load, frustrating users and making them leave. After all, several web pages compete for the visitor's attention. So why waste time when the page speed is slow?
Also, sites with too little code might not give a web crawler enough information. And if search engines can't understand what your page is about, they will not be able to determine the content.
But do these challenges affect ranking? Let's find out.
Effects of Code-To-Text Ratio On Search Engine Results Pages
In a 2018 Google Webmaster office-hours hangout, John Mueller, a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, was asked if the amount of HTML code, compared to the amount of text on a website, played a role in how it ranked. And his answer was an emphatic "no".
That should be the simple answer but it gets a bit more complex than that.
Even though Google doesn't directly look at the code-to-text ratio, many factors of this ratio support SEO best practices. For example, a wrong code-to-text balance can indirectly affect your site's visibility on Google result pages.
Your website's code-to-text ratio can tell which pages need to be improved to give crawlers more information. If your code is too scanty, Google may not understand how relevant it is, which could make the page drop in search results.
On the other hand, sites with a lot of code may take a long time to load. In addition, inflated and unnecessary HTML makes it difficult for mobile devices to load pages quickly.
And in SEO, a friendly user experience is a significant ranking factor coupled with faster loading time. Google Search Console's Core Web Vitals provides insight into how your SEO and UX function together.
Also, web crawlers have difficulty finding their way around cluttered or poorly organized code. Clean, short code is much easier for bots to read. This may not significantly affect your rankings, but it still does matter.
How to use code-to-text ratio in SEO?
These are the ways to use code to text in SEO for your website, but if you are too busy or have a hard time doing it yourself, we at Semalt are always available to help you. These include the following:
1. An indicator for the size of text
By determining the code-to-text ratio, you can determine how much plain text is on a page. But, of course, having more text doesn't always mean that you'll rank higher.
Google doesn't bother about content that appears after the first 100kb. If 150kb of text is on a page, you should break it up into several pages. And it will be beneficial to both SEO and web crawlers.
2. An indicator of inefficient coding techniques
The code-to-text ratio of a page is a way to compare the content size to a page's structure. Most of the time, it's best to use as little code as possible.
If a page looks like it has a lot of content but has a low ratio of text to HTML, this could mean that the code is written incorrectly. Reducing the code on a page is a more efficient way to rank high in result pages.
3. An indicator for Page Load Speed
When the code-to-text ratio is low, the page has many codes. Having lots of code makes your pages take longer to load. And since Google uses page speed as a ranking factor, a low code-to-text ratio indicates that a page won't rank high in Google result pages.
How To Fix Your Code-To-Text Ratio
The primary reason to improve the code-to-text ratio is to enhance user experience.
The first step is to check your code. Then, with the help of tools like the W3C validator, you can ensure that your site is responsive and easy to use while following best coding practices.
This tool will help you find invalid or unnecessary HTML codes that need removal, such as code that isn't required for the page to display.
Afterwards, you'll need to look at the loading time of your page and find out where you can make changes. Again, the Google Page Speed Insights Reports are great tools to get this done.
Once you identify the problems, it will be easy to fix them. For example, don't use tables on your pages as much as possible because they take lots of HTML code. Instead, use CSS for styling and formatting. And it would be best to put them in separate files.
If your site uses Javascript or Flash, you should remove these components. Also, remove hidden texts and big white spaces in the content. Finally, check your images; resize and compress them where necessary. In all, your page size should be below 300 KB for the best results.
Conclusion
If you have read to this point, you will understand that the code-to-text ratio is not a Google ranking factor. But the quality of your code, page speed, and code-to-text ratio all play a role in SEO and affect your site's user experience.
To be safe, keep your site's code-to-text ratio between 25% and 70% to ensure that your site is not affected by too much code.
If you struggle to do this on your own, we at Semalt are your best plug. We will ensure that your site operates at the optimum code-to-text ratio. Give us a call today!