4

For SEO, "Content is King". I wonder what would be the SEO cost of garbage text inserted between descriptive content.

The case I have in mind concerns ascii art. Such page would contain consecutive blocks containing a description of the ascii art, followed by the ascii art itself.

Example:

<div class='asciiart'>
  <div class='description'>here is an hideous kitty</div>
  <div class='ascii'><pre>
   (%(//    (6%(
   /%7%CCGG66%%C
   (%7%%G#QO%C%(
  /%7%%%OOGC777%/
   77(%G6C6GQ%(%/
   C67%%776%7%%%
    (O%OGQQ#GCC
    (77%G6CGQG%(
    7%%%%%GQ%%C%/
   (%77%%GQ6%%%%(
  /#O((%GQGGG%%7(
   O%7%%%OOGC%%%%(
  (%%77%CGQ@Q%%%(%%/
 /C%766OQQ#OQG6C777%(
 7%C7%%6GGQGQO6%%%%7%
(7%77%OQ@Q#@#QC%((%%%/
(7%7%%GG(%OQ#Q#QGC%77/
 7%77%6OOGQ@#%O6%(7%%/
 /77%%6GQ@#QCOQGCO%%(
   /(%C6G##@@QOO%%%/
      ///(O@#@(/(/
           /#@6/
             (GG#/
              /@@O
               /@@6
                Q@O
        (      /O@O
        @@6 /(QQ@@
          (@@6@#</pre>
  </div>
</div>

or maybe worse, instead of <pre> element, the ascii art can be composed of consecutive <span> in <div> in order to set different colors to each part of the art.

In both case, the page is full of textual data that are non-sense for a search engine. If this implies a negative impact on SEO, is there a way to tell the search engine to ignore these garbage parts?

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Doing a few Google searches will show Google doesn't care about that text. There are sites ranking high who provide ascii art for many keywords. There are many triggers that will help your page rank like - social signals and quality inbound links. Make sure you use your header tags correctly as well and use good permalinks.

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  • Google cares about all text. The more "garbage" you have in a page, the less keyword density you get for the words really care about. And the less keyword density you get, the less on-page ranking you get. So it certainly matters.
    – InanisAtheos
    Commented Jan 8, 2013 at 15:09
  • 1
    Of course it cares about text. Google's algorithm will know pretty quickly if it's really garbage or not. If you've got a description with the correct headers in place and good permalink structure and people are sharing your link all over the social channels Google will analyze that as well as analyze the natural backlinks to the page. It's a fine tuned engine. It's not just what's on the text on the page that ranks it. This is just like how many of his competitors are already ranking for ascii keywords. Most have garbage text but yet still rank high.
    – Joe Z
    Commented Jan 8, 2013 at 16:10

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