Are low Text to HTML ratios considered to be a negative ranking factor for SEO? Generally, the Text to HTML ratio is rarely mentioned while discussing SEO strategies or SEO requirements by search engine experts.

Though it may not be an SEO ranking factor, the Text to HTML ratio can strongly affect the end-user experience.

Let us learn about the Text to HTML ratio and the best way to utilize it to improve your web page performance.

Text to HTML ratio

A high text-to-code ratio indicates an enhanced user experience. Having an enhanced user interface has been one of the key search ranking factors for search engines.

What is Text to HTML ratio?

Most web pages are written in HTML code to display text content on the screen.

A text to HTML ratio is used for measuring the amount of text content on the web page in comparison to the amount of HTML code required for displaying it.

The Text to HTML ratio is commonly known as a text to code ratio or code to text ratio.

How is the Text to HTML ratio calculated?

It is very simple to calculate the Text to HTML ratio. It can be calculated manually by considering the amount of text that is displayed on the web page as compared to the amount of HTML codes like links, JavaScript, headings, image tags, etc. used for displaying it.

There are free ratio checker tools available that can be used for analyzing the ratio on your web pages. A good and effective code checker tool will display results including the page size, text size, code size, and code to text ratio, etc.

The ratio checker tools extract the text from paragraphs and the anchor texts from the HTML code. The content ratio is then calculated based on these patterns to arrive at the x% versus y% ratio.

What is considered to be a good Text to HTML ratio?

A ratio of anywhere between 25 to 70 percent is considered to be a good Text to HTML ratio.

The percentage determines the visible text content ratio as opposed to HTML elements and other non-visible information of the website.

Most of the websites with high search engine rankings have a large amount of visible text. Search engines like Google give a lot of importance to content-driven sites.

How Does the Text to HTML ratio affect SEO?

Though the Text to HTML ratio is not considered a ranking factor by the search engines, there are several factors of the ratio that support best SEO practices. Thus the ratio may have an indirect impact on the search engine rankings.

Google may not use the Text to HTML ratio as a ranking signal, but the ratio can help to identify if the webpage has bloated HTML. A bloated HTML can slow down the website especially for mobile users.

Hence indirectly a disproportionate ratio can lead to slow page loading speed whereby impacting the search engine rankings.

Benefits of high Text to HTML ratio

  • Web pages having higher text content than HTML code are easily readable and understandable for people. The higher text content gives the impression that the website is developed for the audience and not for the search engine This helps in improving the value of the website in the eyes of the search engines.
  • High Text to HTML ratio leads to improved user experience. Providing a good user experience is one of the key ranking factors for Google and other search engines
  • The lesser the number of HTML elements in a webpage, the higher is its page loading speed. A high page load speed is also an important ranking factor.
  • A clean code and a high ratio of text in a website make it easy for crawlers from search engines to index the website.

How to Optimize the Text to HTML ratio for your website?

Below mentioned are few tips which can help optimize your webpage’s Text to HTML ratio whereby help improve the end-user experience:

  • Check the validity of the HTML code and get rid of any unwanted code
  • Eliminate huge white spaces
  • Do not use many tabs
  • Get rid of the comments in the code
  • Avoid using tables in your layout unless necessary
  • Use a CSS for styling and formatting purpose
  • Resize images and remove the ones not required
  • Use less JavaScript
  • Maintain the size of the webpage below 300kb
  • Remove any form of hidden text not visible to users
  • Include easily readable and understandable text

How does a website designing company help?

GSM marketing agency is a top Tucson web designing company that can help design a website for your business that will rank high on the search engine rankings.

We offer affordable and responsive web design services. Our team will work dedicatedly to create a website for you that will help drive more customers to your business.

We can help you maintain a good Text to HTML ratio in your website to ensure your website performance is not affected.

Contact us today to know more about our services.