Friday, August 28, 2009

Have css/tables layouts anything to do with SEO?

My answer is pretty clear "NOT at all"

First of all, i can design both ways, so there are no hidden words to be spoken. Let's sit down and think why google or any other crawler should give SEO benefit to a css-layout website. There is absolutely no logical reason! Google has nothing to do with the way we decide to structure our layout. "table-tr-td" has exactly the same SEO value as "div". SEO has to do with CONTENT and semantic structure, not styling and layouts.

Google does not care if i am using divs or tables, bright or dark colors, minimal or maximal headers. Google only cares about the content of my site and how other websites consider my website (quality and quantity of backlinks).

Many web-swindlers try to convince clients that a css/div layout website would be placed higher than a table layout website. They try to convince them as their "ready-to-sell" CMS solutions are based in css-layout design. Potential customers can be easily convinced as they are not aware of such detailed comments.

I am not trying to tell that it is better for a web designer to use tables instead of divs or inline styles instead of css files. But please, we should be honest about the advantages of css layouts (i.e. more clear and undersandable for developing reasons, a little bit bandwidth usage economy, easy-editable and more other reasons, mostly regarding web designers and developers and not customers theirselves). Css layout won't bring you more traffic by itself! Css layout is not SEO's magic wand!