Custom elements within the head tag of your website can disrupt Google crawling your website. This can potentially cause issues with your website’s SEO.
Why is the head tag on your website?
The head tag on your website is a section of the HTML code that makes up your website. This tag normally holds the meta title and meta description of your website and any important code that is needed for your website. This is separate to the header of your website, which is generically the logo and menu at the top of your website.
What are custom elements?
Custom elements allow developers to create HTML elements tailored to the needs of the website they are building. These can be reusable and self-contained so that they are separate to the rest of the code that makes up your website.
In a Twitter thread, a member of the public asked if having custom elements in the head tag were technically valid. Google’s John Mueller replied, saying that custom elements in the head tag can likely break page rendering for Google Search.
Due to Google not recognising custom elements when rendering your website, this can cause issues with the indexing of your website, as Google traditionally relies on standard HTML tags so that its crawlers can understand the content and structure of your website. This is why it’s important to have a website that is coded correctly and therefore SEO friendly.
If you’ve got custom elements on your website, it is recommended that you use JSON-LD tags. These tags won’t hinder Google crawlers from being able to understand your website.
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