cutting code

does it help with seo

[mack]

I recently removed all my adverts that where provided by a third party ad company and replaced them with some of my own using an ad system. The third party company banners used loads of java script and code that had to be pasted into my pages. now all i have is a few lines of html code. will this help me out when spiders read my pages??? :)

[brotherhood of LAN]

it wont help them much, but it sure helps everyone involved

no javascript, no problem :) i got rid of mine (admittedly other factors were involved) and jumped up 50 places on google. Its better for them to store "efficient" pages in their cache, good for visitors...and good on your bandwidth!

[mack]

The main reason i removed those banners was bacause it was slowing my page load down. The company concerned say that because the banner is located in their servers that page load speed will not be effected. what they seam to fprget is that th user only uses one browser so it will still have to load all the info on the same page so your page does slow down whilst the image or banner is loading. anyway that another rant out the way :)

[Marcia]

I don't know how heavy your overall code is mack, but in cases where the file sizes, including the HTML, are huge, it can be a hindrance. It's probably not relevant in your case, but there is a limit to how much will get grabbed.

There are several threads here about sizes, including a reference to the ratio between the HTML code and the page text, but I can't seem to locate it.

[chiyo]

I think you have done the right thing Mack. The cleaner the code and better ratio of actual content vs code, the quicker the loading, the easier for spiders to parse etc. Iid never forget the time when we had excellent ratings on AV. Then we added a js menu to the top of every page and we plummetted over night, never to recover.

Remember if you are accessing content from a third party server you are dependent on the speed and accessibility of their server as well. I dont understand the arguments of your advertising deliverer! It may put server load onto theirs rather than yours, but it does not reduce page loading times, and you have no control. I have visited many pages which have not loaded at all becuase a third party ad system's server was down!

There are also "neighbourhoods" and linking issues to consider. Now we are very very careful about fetching third party content of any kind for our pages for all these reasons.

We do deliver ads, but from our own very simple rotating external javascript solution. It helps also in making your site looking different, original and unlike all the standard ad delivery mechanisms. Also some good free PHP text ad sytems around too with customer access to reports and live payment, if you want more functionality and dont want javascript.

[buckworks]

NetMechanic says that each additional server that must be contacted will increase a page's loading time by about two seconds. So, reducing the number of servers that are supplying content for a page can only be a good thing!

[mack]

I agree with all comments and it makes sence to me to have as few servers supply a page as possible. Even remote hosted hit counters are a drain on load time. I downloaded and installed a simple cgi banner rotating script and am now using that to serve my banners. That was only a few lines of html as opesed to thirty lines of java. page loads better so that is a win. If Google decided to like it to then that a bonus. a nice bonus at that. :)

[brotherhood of LAN]

hey again mack ;)

I think one of the threads Marcia is thinking about, that she may have wanted to tell u about can be found under the site search ... "content to code" ratio.

Also something about "ever forget the 40kb sweet spot". Im sure me & Tedster said something about banners in there, if not, a related one.

>Third-Party Servers

Mack, I scrapped my ads. I was serving about 5000 ads a day and basically not getting a good return on it. I hope you are. If you aint, youre probably making yourself more money by not showing them ;)

P.S. That javascript, did you call it externally?

[mack]

Im not making much of a return on them. Thats why i scrapped them. And yes the java was called remotly. :)