Basic SEO HTML

[wparlaman]

Hello Everyone,

One place I am weak is coding for SEO. I need to get better.

One question I do have is can anyone explain why it's important to place css and java script files in an external file?

How do you do this and how do you know if it's already being done?

If it has not been done on a site is it hard to go back and do?

I understand this is important from a site load time issue

Thanks,

Bill

P.S. Can anyone recommend a resource where I can learn proper html coding for SEO?  Thank you!

[kmander]

Speeds up the download time of the page - good for Google and good for users. Helps browsers cache objects and speeds up future page views and pages from the same site.

Look at the source code to see if you're linking to a CSS/JS document or displaying it on page.

Easy to change if it's on page - stick it in a new document and link to it. Google around for help.

[DougRoberts]

A good place to start is to look at google's webmaster guidelines:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

[jennita]

Hi Bill!

A couple of your questions that haven't been answered yet:

How do you do this and how do you know if it's already being done?

When you look at the code for a page, if you see a lot of code within tags, that means that the CSS is on the page rather than in an external file.

You can do the same with JavaScript. If there is a lot of code within the tags in the source code, you know there is JavaScript on the page instead of in an external file.

If it has not been done on a site is it hard to go back and do?

It is very simple to take this code, put it into an external file, then link to it like we do on this particular page's code:

<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="[/q/moz_nav_assets/stylesheets/production/all.css?0.4.25](view-source:http://www.seomoz.org/q/moz_nav_assets/stylesheets/production/all.css?0.4.25)" />

That is what it looks like when you link to a CSS external file.

If possible though, I'd definitely have someone who knows and understands the code help you out at first. There's nothing more infuriating that making what you think is a small change to a JavaScript file and it end up breaking the whole site.

Good luck! And I hope this helps a bit.