TheGypsy wrote:

...poor web designers.... one less 'value' they can sell... ha ha ha ha.

Got my chuckle for the monring!

Not really. From a webdesigners point of view, I guess CSS becomes more important, as it enables the possibilities to view content for various media as screenreader, pda, mobile and printer this is a usuablity issue as more than a half of the internet-users maybe already´re using handhelds.

waveshoppe wrote:

Its really a matter of preference because many prefer to use tables for the layout because all browsers render them the same, whereas different browsers render different CSS things differently, and no browser implements all of CSS. But from a SEO point of view, and assuming the document is crawl-able, neither method will help you “rank” better or worse. Coding methods have nothing to do with how a site ranks.

I have to disagree here

The poor / incorrect use of tables will break a browser's rendering of a page
The poor / incorrect use of semantics will break a browser's rendering of a page

CSS and a semantic page structure can allow for source ordering, which in my experiance can lead to better rankings (putting your unique, important content towards the top of your source code and your repeated stuff, like navigation etc towards the bottom of the code and using CSS to position everything where you want it on the page)

Northie wrote:

waveshoppe wrote:

Its really a matter of preference because many prefer to use tables for the layout because all browsers render them the same, whereas different browsers render different CSS things differently, and no browser implements all of CSS. But from a SEO point of view, and assuming the document is crawl-able, neither method will help you “rank” better or worse. Coding methods have nothing to do with how a site ranks.

I have to disagree here

The poor / incorrect use of tables will break a browser's rendering of a page
The poor / incorrect use of semantics will break a browser's rendering of a page

Agreed - you can break a page in many ways, whether or not you use tables has nothing to do with it.

For me personally, when people use tabled layouts and they break the page, trying to fix it is a nightmare.  The code becomes so convoluted and disorganized that finding the source of the problem is next to impossible.

With well structured HTML/CSS, finding the source of any display problems is significantly easier.

And yes, you can quite easily make a page look the same from one browser to the next without using tables.  But just like designing with tables, if you don't know what you are doing, you'll probably break something.

Isn’t the thread about whether one style will rank better than the other? Please tell me how CSS will help a site rank better, rank meaning that you will have a better position in the SERP

waveshoppe wrote:

Isn’t the thread about whether one style will rank better than the other? Please tell me how CSS will help a site rank better, rank meaning that you will have a better position in the SERP

Simple - it won't make a hair of difference so long as both versions of HTML are at least somewhat close to being valid.

Obviously if your HTML is so horrible that the spider accidentally throws out a bunch of text thinking its part of an HTML tag, then that could cause a problem.

But if your talking about rankings, there won't be any difference between tables and tableless layouts.

Using CSS can improve rankings if you know what you're doing

source ordering, this works and I have achieved results from it.

SEs don't give a sh*t whether the code is valid, or not: If they can read and parse the content out of html, word documents, pdfs, and all these - http://www.google.com/support/webmaster … swer=35287 then extracting the content from invalid html is going to be pretty easy.

Tables are great when it comes to tabular data, and they don't beak in text browsers unless the table code is poor.

You cannot order your source with tables, you can with CSS

what is source ordering? [my original post has gone, so try this one] http://forums.site-reference.com/topic/37476/#p37476

source ordering is the final part of heavy on-site optimisation or the first and most important part of a structured, semantic page lay out

source ordering, this works and I have achieved results from it.

I thought that had been discounted earlier in the thread.

My own experience, with a tabled site recoded into CSS specifically to put the best content higher in the coding was a crashing rankings that may now, after two years just be starting to recover

matte wrote:

source ordering, this works and I have achieved results from it.

I thought that had been discounted earlier in the thread.

My own experience, with a tabled site recoded into CSS specifically to put the best content higher in the coding was a crashing rankings that may now, after two years just be starting to recover

I know a lot of people believe that source ordering is an effective way to go.  I personally don't think it makes much of a difference - there are so many other factors which will make a bigger impact that its hard to attribute a good ranking to the order of your code alone.  The fact is, I've gotten sites that are source ordered to rank high, and I've gotten sites that are not source ordered in my favor to rank high. 

As for your experience, Matte, isn't it possible that there may have been something else that hurt your rankings other than the switch to CSS?  I find it really hard to believe that CSS sites would actually rank worse (or that it would make a difference at all).  What other things did you change on that site?  Did your links change at all?  Did your content change at all?  Is it possible that the HTML was invalid which would cause confusion with the bots?

matte wrote:

source ordering, this works and I have achieved results from it.

I thought that had been discounted earlier in the thread.

By someone who didn't get results from it???

matte wrote:

My own experience, with a tabled site recoded into CSS specifically to put the best content higher in the coding was a crashing rankings that may now, after two years just be starting to recover

Rankings crash and burn whenever a large structural change happens to your site.

Source ordering - Text to Code Ratios - KW Density

Silly,Silly,Silly,Silly,Silly,Silly,Silly,Silly,Silly,Silly,Silly,Silly,Silly,Silly,

SEO ain't rocket science nor brain surgery. Don't make it more difficult than it needs to be.

Harumph --

As for your experience, Matte, isn't it possible that there may have been something else that hurt your rankings other than the switch to CSS?

Nah, it was 100% identical content and all the pages were (anally retentive period) 100% valid.

Northie - you mean page structure? yes that changed, but the site structure was identical.