Pages have Low Text-HTML Ratio
What does the Low Text-HTML Ratio Mean?
It means that you have a lot of code, and not that much visible content for users to read. This happens a lot with a WordPress sites just because there’s a lot of backend code. Sometimes you have a big theme with a lot of code. Sometimes there are lots of plugins with a lot of code.
Either way, there’s just a lot of code and not so much visible text for users to read.
Why is it an Issue?
Speed
[0:27] Google and other search engines have placed an emphasis on speed, the more code you have, the more that a web browser has to read in order to display the page.
[0:35] A general rule of thumb is lesser code is better, because it’s going to be faster, and a faster site is probably going to rank higher in search engines.
Content
[0:44] The other reason is just you want to have a lot of content, Google and other engines prefer sites with a lot of content. That’s what they’re indexing, they’re indexing your content, not your code. So a page without much content typically is not going to rank as well as a similar page with more content.
How can you fix a Low Text-HTML Ratio?
Check your WordPress Plugins
[1:04] A lot of times, if you have a plugins that are not really important, you can simply get rid of them, or at least deactivate them if you don’t want to completely delete them. That alone can sometimes alleviate this issue, at least a little bit.
Adjust the Code
[1:15] I don’t recommend going into the code and trying to change it and reduce it manually. You can do that, technically, by going into the editor within WordPress and looking at the code php files and trying to reduce code that way, but it’s likely going to lead to more problems so I really don’t recommend doing that unless you know what you’re doing. If you’re a developer, and you really have a good handle on these things, then go ahead.
Increase the Amount of Visible Text
[1:36] Otherwise, I would say the best way to fix this is just increased the amount of text you have on the page for any page that you think should be ranking in Google or for any page that you want to have ranking and Google
When to Ignore this Issue
[1:49] For some pages, it might not be that important. Say, for example, the Contact page, that’s a good example of a page that typically is not going to have a lot of content. So if you’re getting this type of warning on a on your contact page, or perhaps on an image gallery page, or something like that, I would say it’s probably not something you need to worry about.
Look for the “Low Word Count” Issue
[2:09] Another thing to do is check to see if you have the issue called Low Word Count for the same pages, that’s a separate SEMrush issue. If you have that issue and ALSO this issue for any given page, I would say that page should have more content, again, unless that’s like the contact page or an image gallery or something like that.
[2:28] If you have pages that have the low text HTML ratio, but do NOT have the low word count issue, it’s probably not a major problem for your site. However, if you’re seeing the Low Text to HTML Ratio across every single page on your site, I would say (especially if you’re running WordPress), that you have some sort of big heavy theme or plugin that’s loading your pages with content, see if you can minimize the number of plugins.
Google Page Speed Insights
[2:55] If you want to take this a step further and see how it’s affecting your speed. You can use the Google PageSpeed Insights tool, run that on a page or a number of pages on your site and see what the recommendations are. First, it’ll give you a score. It’ll give you a speed Score. And then it’ll give you some recommendations that tell you hey, if you if your score is low, this is what might be causing it read through those recommendations, and see if there’s something in there that can kind of point you to which plugins or which code might be the culprit here