Google responds on whether the size of the code in the <head> section affects SEO performance.
A Twitter user expressed his SEO concerns regarding the <head> section. He mentioned that he is working with a headless site and the <head> section contains 4.6 rows of code and scripts. He also used the URL inspector tool to check whether the site rendered correctly, which it did.
Google’s John Mueller responded to this tweet. According to John Mueller, the site will not have rendering issues due to the size of the <head> section. He also suggested that in such scenarios, the SEO directives should be placed at the top of the head section so that Google can easily find and process them.
That seems suboptimial. My recommendation would be to put any "SEO-directives" on top of the head, so that they can be found & processed easily. The rest is more a matter of rendering, which shouldn't have issues just based on size.
— johnmu is not a chatbot yet 🐀 (@JohnMu) December 9, 2021
Importance of Head section for SEO
The <head> section is the one that contains important snippets of code that can be vital for SEO. It is always advised to get rid of unused and unnecessary code from the <head> section.
Important codes for SEO in <head> include:
Google Analytics and Search Console tracking codes
Example:
<!– Google Tag Manager –>
<script>(function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({‘gtm.start’:
new Date().getTime(),event:’gtm.js’});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],
j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!=’dataLayer’?’&l=’+l:”;j.async=true;j.src=
‘https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id=’+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);
})(window,document,’script’,’dataLayer’,’GTM-XXXXXX’);</script>
<!– End Google Tag Manager –>
Canonical tags
Example:
<link rel=“canonical” href=“abc.com/page/” />
Title and Meta Descriptions
<title>Example Title</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Example Description.”>
OpenGraph tags
Example:
<meta property=”og:type” content=”article” />
<meta property=”og:title” content=”Example Title” />
<meta property=”og:description” content=”Example Description” />
Hreflang code
Example:
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-us” href=”abc.com/us/” />
Key Takeaway
When working with headless sites, make sure to define all the SEO directives at the start. This will help ensure that the Googlebot can render and index your pages effectively. The size of the <head> section should not impact your SEO performance. Remove any unnecessary code from the <head> section that blocks other important resources.
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