'passing juice' in internal and external links and text to html ratio

Question

Couple of questions about SEO:

• Is there any evidence to support the idea that 'passing juice' is a bad thing for internal and external web links?

• Equally is there any evidence to support the idea that text to HTML ratio, particularly on homepages is considered when ranking.

It has always appeared to me that these are myths.

Answer 1

I don't think the ratio matters. If you can inline style say a div tag on your page which is a valid way of styling an element. Why would Google care if you did it that way or through a style sheet, simply because you saved some space in your final rendered HTML file? The biggest factor in ranking is incoming links from relevant and authority sites. For internal links Matt Cutts from Google suggested you just let PR flow through your site naturally and not try and sculpt it any way by setting nofollow on internal links. –

Answer 2

Whether code to content ratio matters or not is one of those things debated in SEO. I would act as if it did as there have been no conclusive tests to to the contrary. Eitherway where you most valuable content appears in the mark up does matter and if you have a content management system that mangle your mark up you have issues. Write you mark up with your most valuable content at the top and then use CSS to get it where you want it on the page.

With regard to passing link juice internally or externally i would do nothing to artificially inhibit or inflate this.

Good luck =)