Unique code unique content

[kidder]

Is it fair to say that the measure of a sites "unique" nature goes beyond just the written content of the page to the code & structure of the site. Does a well written custom site have an advantage over a more common CMS such as wordpress when you are considering SEO?

[Quadrille]

'unique' applies to the whole code.

But even within a site, uniqueness will depend on the 'content' rather than the surrounding code.

Code is only likely to matter in a 'uniqueness' sense if you have code bloat, which may be sloppy code from a template or cms system, or simply failure to use css, and dumping tons of shared links, promos etc on pages with just a paragraph of unique content.

I'm generalising and oversimplifying - but you get my drift!

[kidder]

So take 2 identical aged and linked sites with the same content but different code for example 1 wordpress and 1 well written custom script. Then is the SE going to see the wordpress "footprint" and rank the more "unique" site higher all things being equal?

I have a site that has a custom "news" section and a wordpress section and the wordpress content has never ranked like the custom section of the site.

[Quadrille]

No; but it's possible that a poorly-coded site will not do so well.

It isn't possible to make a blanket statement, as we just don't know exactly what combination of problems can damage a site, but sick site syndrome can include sites with bloated code, poor navigation, over-optimisation, poor unique to total ratio and many other code-related issues

The effects include duplicate issues or less depth to the spidering, suplementary issues, poor rank, poor ranking or whatever.

But it may be simple things. For example: a hand coded page usually has a meta description, if only because it doesn't occur to the writer not to do it. A cms page may have no md, or the same as 10,000 other pages. Result? supplementary listing or worse.

Yes, I'm generalising again; it's not an area where you can ever be specific without looking at the site. It's lkely not cms that's wrong, but the way cms is set up - or the way it isn't checked for errors!

Everyone will tell you - quite correctly - that SEs do not require code to be 'correct'. There's no part of Google's algo that deducts marks for using bold instead of strong, etc. That's been said, umpteen times.

But we do not know all the factors SEs use, or how they are prioritized, and poor code may deny the SEs ranking info they need, send them confusing messages, waste their time etc. A spider may see a sloppy-coded site like wading through mud. It may lose concentration - or give up and go home.

So while perfect code is not required, sloppy code is asking for trouble. And machines often generate sloppy code.