Code to Content Ratios and SEO (Part One)

Search engine optimization is a constantly evolving endeavor.  What was true a few years ago might not be true anymore.  What was believed to be true as early as yesterday may have never been true.  You get the idea.  There are gray areas, black spots, and zones that have been completely razed and replaced.

Even when we find out that “the truth is a lie” and/or have a frequently-parrotted SEO perspective debunked, not everyone gets the memo.  That’s why you can still find throngs of websites crowing about the “code to content ratio” and just how important it is to your SEO success.

The idea is simple and it has an intuitive appeal.  Google wants content.  It wasnt to see it, read it, log it, etc.  If your site is 90% code and 10% content, Google will have some very big questions about the quality of user experience youre providing and exactly why there isn’t so much text on your pages.  Thus, it pays to have a lot more content than you do code on your site.

The story is often buttressed by this idea that the Googlebots will only read a certain quantity of text/code on any given page before it simply gives up and/or moves on.  If you have too much HTML and too little text, the story goes, Google isn’t going to get a clear picture of what you’re doing and you’ll suffer in teh SERPs because of it.

This story has bee aroud for a long time.   And people are still talking about it today as if it’s one of SEOs gospel thruths.  

It isn’t.  In fact, it isn’t even close to being the truth now and there’s good reason to wonder if it every has been.  

That’s right, the idea that your code to content ratio will have a real impact on your listings in the search engines is completely wrong.  It can’t, it doesn’t and it won’t.

Next time, we’ll break it down a little, explaining exactly why your code to content ratio doesn’t really matter.