<p>&nbsp;</p> or <br />

I would like to start a SEO discussion on <br /> and <p>&nbsp;</p> for line spaces.
What would be better to use in regards to SEO?

Does it have any effect at all?

I was thinking that using <p>&nbsp;</p> wouldn't be good because the paragraph doesn't contain any content so Search engines may not like this.

What's better? Line break or non spacing break.

 

Not sure there's any difference from a SEO perspective.

From a standards perspective you should use <br> or <br /> depending on your doctype.

 

From SEO perspective it doesn't matter if you use <p> or <BR>.

So Page break, Line break or non spacing break doesn't affect your site's SEO.

 

only thing that matters from the seo point of view is,
if a tag is opened, it must be closed. that's it!

 

I like br 10x better. I never understood why there where always so many p tags in WYSWYG editors like DW and Frontpage

 

I would say there is no difference in both cases

 

<br> tags are empty tags... so it has no end tag.

 

In XHTML 'empty tags' like BR such be closed like this: <br />. I don't think this has any effect on rankings.

 

no difference

 

Could you elaborate on the difference between <br> and <br /> a bit further? I guess I don't understand the difference in doctypes.

Thanks!

John

 

As far as SEO goes, I doubt it matters. My money would be on whichever method takes us less code, therefore <br /> would be the way to go.

 

I agree with everyone in saying that it doesn't really matter...but if you are looking to code something quick and efficient that go for the <br>.

 

<br> is fine in HTML, but XHTML requires every tag to be closed. Hence its use of the self-closing tag <br/>.

 

I use <br /> for only row breaks
<p> is good for paragraphs since it breaks apart paragraphs. empty <p> is stupid, dont use

 

100% agree!!

 

There is definately a difference.

<br> is definately stronger.
Dont use <p> for a line break. not only is it not what its for, but it will increase your code to content ratio.

 

There is not much difference between both. I'd say use <br /> for line breaks and <p></p> for paragraphs, new content, etc.

 

i use <p></p> (w/o the &nbsp for my site as a divider. the hr tag shows up funny in IE and FF/Netscape (no colour change, height difference..etc). so i have to use background image attribute (CSS) in my p tag. doesn't really affects anything though.

 

Some good point here.

I agree with Kalyse Comment below:

 

don't understand why would someone think that <p>, &nbsp or <br> affect SEO? Is there a reason for this suspicion?