What is Text/HTML ratio and how to analyze it?

You might have noticed the “Text/HTML ratio” indicator in the “Content” report. In this article, we will explain what it is and how the Text/HTML ratio affects your SEO.

What is the Text/HTML ratio?

The Text/HTML ratio represents the proportion of text content to HTML code on a web page. Textual content refers to the visible information that users see, while HTML code is responsible for structuring and formatting the page, including text, images, and other types of content.

Why is the Text/HTML ratio important?

Firstly, a large amount of HTML code does not necessarily indicate quality. Excessive HTML code, especially in the form of a large DOM tree, can slow down page performance. Page performance is crucial for users and also impacts your website’s ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Secondly, pages with a low amount of text may perform poorly in SERPs because search engines find it challenging to understand the subject of the page without sufficient textual content. 

On the other hand, it’s important to ensure that the amount of text is not excessively high to maintain a good user experience.

How to calculate the Text/HTML ratio?

JetOctopus automatically calculates the Text/HTML ratio during crawling. You can find this data in the “Content” section of the tool. 

The general data for your entire website is displayed in the “Content” dashboard, and you can also select specific segments of pages to identify those with the lowest Text/HTML ratio. 

You can also evaluate the distribution of pages by Text/HTML ratio on the chart of the same name.

All chart segments are clickable. Click on the desired number on the desired segment to go to the data table for detailed analysis.

In the filters, you have the flexibility to choose the desired ratio of text to HTML and configure other filters for more in-depth analysis.
As you can see in the screenshot, we are using a decimal system of coefficients.

For example, a ratio of 0.05 indicates that the text occupies only 5% of the page, while a ratio of 0.5 means there is an equal distribution of 50% text and 50% HTML code.

It’s important to note that there is no ideal Text/HTML ratio. However, a ratio that is too low (below 5%) requires careful analysis, while a ratio higher than 10% is generally considered optimal.

Conclusions

While the Text/HTML ratio is important, it’s crucial to consider other metrics as well, such as page performance, word count per page, and the number of unique words per page. A comprehensive analysis of multiple metrics can help identify critical issues that may impact your SEO.

Remember to take a holistic approach when assessing your website’s performance and optimizing for search engines.