Content Optimization- Maintaining a High Text to Code Ratio
Search Engines work harder if your page consists of massive codes especially when these codes are more than your text. This is extremely fatal when a webpage uses an internal stylesheet and JavaScript codes for its navigation menu just before reaching the content. As Search Engine concentrates on the content near the top of the page, the massive amount of non-content codes up there will hinder the indexing. Fortunately, this situation is easily fixed by the following methods.
Using external JavaScript
Javascript can be coded outside of a HTML page. Using an external JavaScript file has many advantages such as reducing overall file size (since it can be reused), faster download time (due to caching) and most importantly, make your content more visible to the Search Engine.
A sample code for including an external JavaScript file
Assuming you have some codes that assign some variables and functions declared in JavaScipt, and this can be found on top of all your pages. Now, cut the codes out from a page and paste them inside a blank file and save it as example.js. After that, replace the codes in all the pages with the following code:<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="example.js">
Using external Cascading Style Sheet (CSS)
You can do the same to CSS codes by using an external CSS file and make all the HTML pages referred to it. It is very SEO unfriendly by attaching all the usual CSS codes into every pages of the site and this also defeat the original purpose of CSS- Usability. Therefore, using an external file to contain all your CSS codes is a good rule of thumb for web designing and of course, SEO.
A sample code for including an external CSS file
You can call the CSS file by replacing the CSS codes in the file with the following code:<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" type="text/css">