: Is minifying id and class names a bad SEO practice? I am a big fan of minifying everything whenever possible. It is a sin for me to don't do this. However, I recently read that one of the

@Cofer257

No, it is not correct and unfortunately that is one of the lower quality answers to that question that somehow got upvotes. I edited it to remove that line.

Class names and ID names in HTML make no difference to SEO. One exception is the case of microformats where search engines parse them, and may display certain extra snippets in search results.

There is no need to try and "minify" your HTML. Make sure the server is sending the content gzipped as that makes a big difference.

Note that many of the answers to that question are not things that would directly improve search rankings, most are about site visibility and promotion, which are long-term, indirect ranking factors.

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@Odierno851

I don't think ID's nor classes matter SEO wise.

However: why are you changing id and class names to 1 or 2 characters? What do you gain from it? If you are doing it for performance, don't do it. Minifying them only gives you a very tiny gain. And the only thing you got is unreadable, unrecognizable stuff.

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@Kevin317

I wouldn't worry about ID and class names. Although the most popular ID names did affect new HTML5 tags names (header, footer, etc) and may help non HTML5 sites show distinct sections of their pages, I wouldn't go so far as to say including keywords in them affect rankings. I would be sure to use proper HTML tags and microformats, however. We know as a fact that search engines use those as rankings factors or at the very least that they can affect how search engines display your content in their search results which can affect your click through rate.

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