How important is code structure for SEO?
If you have all the right content, links, keywords, alt tags, and meta information; how important is the general structure/appearance of the html/xhtml/css code as it pertains to placement in search engines?
2 Responses
SEO Consultant
06 Feb 2010
memetrader
06 Feb 2010
For SEO code structure is not important at all.
As Matt Cutts (Google Engineer) says "Googlebot is very forgiving". Experienced SEOs have known this for years, some have even shown by experiment that Googlebot doesn’t care http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Search-Engines/Valid-HTML-Does-Google-Care.html
However although Goolebot is not a problem you should write valid code for more important reasons such as maintainability and cross browser compatibility http://www.456bereastreet.com/
Extremely important. Bad code on a web site can keep the search engines from reading your site correctly. Sites like http://validator.w3.org/ can tell you if you have bad code. As far as SEO, well, if your site uses blackhat tricks, like hidden text or links, keywword stuffing, redirects, small text, cloking etc, you can also be hurt. There is much to do to get a site search engine ready so that it is seen in the best of light to achieve and outplace other web sites.