Code-To-Text Ratio: Watch That Bloat

Writing by Nick Stamoulis

One of the biggest mistakes new webmasters make when they start building their websites is getting code crazy. They want to add every little widget, piece of Javascript code, Flash, and all the other bells and whistles available to them and they fail to watch the code bloat that slows their site’s load time down to a bear crawl. Let me caution you against all that.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting your site to look cool. But you have to weigh the coolness factor with search engine benefits and usability. What usefulness will your site visitors get from your site? Furthermore, what kind of effect on search engine optimization will all those widgets and gadgets have? Some of them will have quite a lot.

If you’re going to use all the neat little features that are available to you, try putting some of that excess code into an external file. Before you set your site on live and tell all your friends and neighbors about it, test the code-to-text ratio to find out where you stand in terms of code bloat. You want your code-to-text ratio to be as low as possible without sacrificing the usability of your website for your visitors. By ensuring that you have a low code-to-text ratio, you improve your chances of improving your SEO.