Farooque
Wandering thoughts of an unsettled mind…
Put Your Web Pages on a Diet
May 15, 2008 on 12:00 am | In SEO Best Practices | No CommentsExperienced SEOs know that you can boost your rankings by moving your page content as close to the start of your HTML code as possible. Search engines consider words near the start of your HTML code to be more prominent, and therefore more important, than words buried deep inside the file.
Unfortunately, many web pages are hurt by using layout templates that downgrade the prominence of the page’s primary content. Elaborate HTML tables used to create the page’s masthead and left navigation areas end up pushing the page’s content section - and therefore its keywords - far down in the file.
Just as seriously, web designers clutter the HEAD section of their documents with large sections of JavaScript code or embedded Cascading Style Sheets. While this code can be useful, it pushes your keywords even farther down in the HTML file.
Restructuring your layout tables to improve keyword prominence can be a real challenge and may force you to make design compromises. Fortunately, our New Year’s resolution involves something that’s much easier to address: those bloated JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets.
That’s good, because for many web pages these are the fattest components. I’ve seen HTML files that were 100 kilobytes in size, yet fully 60k of this was JavaScript code.
The prospect of changing your JavaScript code intimidates many people. If you’re like most webmasters, you don’t write your own JavaScript, but instead use a third-party script or script inserted by your HTML editor.
However, to slim down our pages we won’t actually change the content of our JavaScript. We will lift it intact and place it in an external file. Just be aware that when you place your JavaScript in an external file, you don’t need to surround the JavaScript code with SCRIPT tags. In fact doing this may keep your script from working properly.
Once you’ve moved your java code to a separate file, modify your main HTML page to reference the external JavaScript, like this:
In other words, scan your Web pages for appearances of the
Archives:
- May 2008 (2)
- March 2008 (1)
- January 2008 (4)
- December 2007 (1)
- October 2007 (2)
- September 2007 (3)
- August 2007 (4)
- July 2007 (5)
- June 2007 (17)
- May 2007 (6)
- March 2007 (4)
- February 2007 (2)
- January 2007 (2)
- December 2006 (2)
- September 2006 (1)
- February 2006 (1)
- November 2004 (1)
- May 2003 (1)
- March 2002 (1)
- February 1995 (1)
Blogroll
- 10e20.com
- Aaron Wall
- Abhilash
- Ask Kalena
- Ask.com Blog
- Barry Schwartz Blog
- Bizresearch SEM Blog
- Brett Tabke
- Bruce Clay Blog
- Charlene Li
- Chinawhite
- Chris Pirillo
- Chris Zaharias
- ClickZ News
- Comparison Engines
- Compete Blog
- Cre8asite Forums
- Cre8pc Blog
- CRE8PC Blog
- Daggle
- Daily SearchCast
- Danny Sullivan
- David Dalka
- David Naylor
- David Sifry
- David Wallace
- Digital Point Forums
- Dirson
- Emad Fanous
- Epiar
- Eric Ward
- Google AdSense Blog
- Google AdWords Blog
- Google Blog
- Google Blogoscoped
- Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search
- Google Operating System
- Google Webmaster Central Blog
- Gord Hotchkiss
- Gray Hat News
- Gray Wolf
- Greg Boser
- Greg Linden
- Greg Sterling
- High Rankings Forum
- Hitwise Blogs
- I HelpYou Forums
- In Search Of Stuff
- Inside Google
- Inside-SEO.com
- Jen Sense
- Jeremy Zawodny
- Jessica Bowman
- Jim Boykin
- Joe Morin
- John Battelle’s Searchblog
- Kelsey Group Blogs
- LinkMoses: Eric Ward
- Live Search’s Blog
- Marketing Pilgrim
- Matt Cutts
- Micro Persuasion
- Mihai Parparita
- Mike Grehan
- Multilingual Search
- Nelson Minar
- Niall Kennedy
- O’Reilly Radar
- Ogle Earth
- On Google Scholar
- Online Marketing Blog
- Pagerank Prediction
- PaidContent.org
- Pandia
- Patrick Gavin
- Phil Bradley
- PPC Discussions
- Pronet Advertising
- ResearchBuzz
- Resource Shelf
- Rich Skrenta
- Right Scripts
- Robert Scoble
- Robin’s Nest
- Scott Gatz’s Blog
- Search Engine Blog
- Search Engine Forums
- Search Engine Forums
- Search Engine Guide
- Search Engine Journal
- Search Engine Land
- Search Engine Roundtable
- Search Engine Showdown
- Search Engine Strategies Blog
- Search Engine Watch Blog
- Search Engine Watch Forums
- Search Marketing Expo
- Search Marketing Now
- Search Marketing Standard Blog
- Search Views
- SEMPO.org News
- SEO Book
- SEO Buzz Box
- SEO By The Sea
- SEO Egghead
- SEO Scoop
- SEOmoz
- Shoemoney
- Small Business SEM
- Smart Keywords
- Stuntdubl
- Stuntdubl
- TechCrunch
- Techdirt
- Techmeme
- The Mu Life
- The Unofficial Google Weblog
- Thomas Bindl
- Threadwatch
- Tim Bray
- Tim Converse
- Todd Friesen
- Todd Malicoat
- TouchGraph Google Browser
- Traffick
- V7N Blog
- V7N Forums
- Venture Beat
- Vinny Lingham
- Virtual Earth Blog
- Web Guerrilla
- Webmama
- Webmaster World
- WebmasterRadio.FM
- Xooglers
- Yahoo Local & Maps Blog
- Yahoo Publishing Network
- Yahoo Search Blog
- Yahoo Search Marketing Blog
- Yodel Anecdotal
- ZDnet Googling Google
© 2008 Farooque. All Rights Reserved. Designed by Farooque.com.
Entries and comments feeds.
Valid XHTML and CSS.