Two Ways To Optimize JavaScripts In Web Pages

By Michael Wong
Posted Tuesday, September 7, 2004

In this article I show you how to optimize your web pages by moving your JavaScript code out of the all-important top portion of the HTML file.

JavaScripts are usually placed in between the <HEAD> section of a page, which pushes your body text containing your important keyword phrases further down the page.

This can affect the number of keywords that search engine spiders index. It could also makes your keywords less relevant because they appear lower on the page.

The solution is to move the JavaScript code away from the top portion of the HTML file. In fact, I will show you two solutions to resolving this problem.

1. The first solution is to move the JavaScript code into a separate file and link to this file from the HTML file.

This is the preferred solution because it:

reduces your file size, and therefore your download time.

allows you to reuse the code on other pages by simply linking to this file.

Once you have move the JavaScript code to the new file, add the following code to the <HEAD>... </HEAD> portion of the HTML file:

You may replace "file-name" with any file name you like.

Please note that external JavaScript files cannot contain any HTML tags. They must contain only JavaScript code.

Some servers may not recognize the ".js" file type. If that is the case with your server, contact your web hosting company and ask them to add the following line to the "mime.types" file in the server's config directory, and then restart the server.

type=application/x-javascript exts=js

2. The second solution is even simply. All you have to do is move the JavaScript code to the very bottom of the HTML file, below the </HTML> tag.

Yes! It really does work! Although it is considered good programming practice to include your JavaScript within the <HEAD> portion of a HTML file, it isn't necessary.

That's it! Simple isn't it? I highly recommend you use either of these two solutions to optimizing your web pages that contain JavaScript code.

About The Author
Michael Wong is a successful and respected search engine optimization specialist, and author of several search engine optimization books. Mike is also the Editor of Mike's Marketing Tools, the leading review site for the very best web marketing tools.