Text to HTML Ratio: Not Something Google Looks At

While many SEOs have opinions on word count on a page for google to rank that content best, what about the ratio of text to HTML for SEO purposes?  Does the algo look for a “best” text to HTML ratio on webpages?  This question came up in today’s Webmaster hangout with John Mueller.

Here is the question:

We have an online-Shop. What about the text/html-ratio. Sometimes we have just 4% Text, but there are more than 800 Words on a Site. Will it influence the Ranking negatively?

And here is Mueller’s response:

As far as I know, we don’t use the text to HTML ratio for anything.  So this is something that some SEO tools came up with at some point.  But from our point of view we don’t use that at all.

I wouldn’t focus on a metric like that unless there is something of value you can pull out of that for the users.  Maybe what you could be looking at there is seeing that these pages are bloated HTML and when you serve them to users, especially on mobile, it slows everything down. Thats one aspect that could be playing a role there, which is more between you and your users.

But at least from a search or SEO point of view, we don’t look at the text to HTML ratio at all.

That is a good point about using it for finding pages with possible code bloat.  But meeting some mythical Google text to HTML ratio for SEO is not needed.

Here is the video:

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post

Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.

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