How Code Elements Affect SEO
Ensure HTML is W3C validated – W3C validity is in direct relation with your source code structure.
In a nutshell, the cleaner your source code, the easier search engines can crawl and index your pages.
Do not include flash for website pages - In the past, the flash was very popular and used in many websites. However, this is no longer the case since search engines and browsers have hard time understanding and visualizing flash pages. In other words, flash is no longer viable for websites.
Remove inline CSS – CSS or Cascading Style Sheet should be kept as a separate file and not show as part of the source code of a web page as it will make it more difficult for crawlers to index your page.
Text to HTML ratio is too low (<25%) – You need to have more than 25% of your web pages as text content in order for search engines to understand them. If you have more than 75% of your web page as HTML that will not be possible.
Found schema markup – The schema was invented to assist the search engines to understand data in ways that can only understood by the major search engines. Schema microdata is extra code in the form of types and attributes that can be added directly to the HTML of a page and is used to explain to search engines abstract definitions like time and other specific parts of page structure and content that could result in irrelevant search results. For more information on how to add Schema to your website pages you can check the official Schema documentation here.
Link to a sitemap.xml file – It's compulsory to add sitemap.xml into your website in order to inform the search engines to find all of your content, which will certainly influence your SEO and domain authority.
Server Compression – This point is referring to data compression, especially data which is coming out of the server you are hosted on. Compression of any kind and especially Gzip will positively improve your website loading speed and also SEO.
Insert Heading Tags such as H1, H2 and H3 – By using heading tags you help search engines understand your content better.
Insert target keyword into H1, H2 and H3 tag – Implementing the target keyword in your H1, H2 and H3 tags will increase the SEO rate of your website.
Ensure no duplicate heading tags – This is a follow up from the previous point above. Repeated h1, h2 and h3 tags can confuse search engines so it's best to avoid them.
In a nutshell, the cleaner your source code, the easier search engines can crawl and index your pages.
Do not include flash for website pages - In the past, the flash was very popular and used in many websites. However, this is no longer the case since search engines and browsers have hard time understanding and visualizing flash pages. In other words, flash is no longer viable for websites.
Remove inline CSS – CSS or Cascading Style Sheet should be kept as a separate file and not show as part of the source code of a web page as it will make it more difficult for crawlers to index your page.
Text to HTML ratio is too low (<25%) – You need to have more than 25% of your web pages as text content in order for search engines to understand them. If you have more than 75% of your web page as HTML that will not be possible.
Found schema markup – The schema was invented to assist the search engines to understand data in ways that can only understood by the major search engines. Schema microdata is extra code in the form of types and attributes that can be added directly to the HTML of a page and is used to explain to search engines abstract definitions like time and other specific parts of page structure and content that could result in irrelevant search results. For more information on how to add Schema to your website pages you can check the official Schema documentation here.
Link to a sitemap.xml file – It's compulsory to add sitemap.xml into your website in order to inform the search engines to find all of your content, which will certainly influence your SEO and domain authority.
Server Compression – This point is referring to data compression, especially data which is coming out of the server you are hosted on. Compression of any kind and especially Gzip will positively improve your website loading speed and also SEO.
Insert Heading Tags such as H1, H2 and H3 – By using heading tags you help search engines understand your content better.
Insert target keyword into H1, H2 and H3 tag – Implementing the target keyword in your H1, H2 and H3 tags will increase the SEO rate of your website.
Ensure no duplicate heading tags – This is a follow up from the previous point above. Repeated h1, h2 and h3 tags can confuse search engines so it's best to avoid them.
Updated on: 12/03/2019
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