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General Discussion

Posted by Bob Sutherton
Bob Sutherton
20,160 Points

Do search engines penalize sites for sloppy code?

If you are building, say, a custom WordPress theme and you are relatively new to it perhaps there are some telling signs of that in the code.

Do search engines penalize sites for amateur code and if so, how much? How does it work?

1 Answer

SERGIO RODRIGUEZ
SERGIO RODRIGUEZ
17,532 Points
SERGIO RODRIGUEZ
SERGIO RODRIGUEZ
17,532 Points

What do you mean by sloppy?

If by sloppy you mean simple code using only html and css, there is NO penalization for this.

On the other hand, there will be penalization if your code:

  1. Relies heavily in non semantic html for styling.
  2. You don't use the proper title and description tags on your header tag.
  3. You don't include alt text or captions in your images.
  4. You try to use SEO black-hat techniques.
  5. You're content is misleading.
  6. You have duplicated content.
  7. You don't have links to every page on your site.
  8. Among others.

I strongly suggest you to take the SEO basics course to clear up your mind with this topic.