I just joined the MSN small business directory, and as a 'freebee' you get to use 'submit it' a program to help analyse your pages and offer seo advice. It said in the FAQ section that if you don't use CSS, you basically will never rank well because SE's can't index your pages properly! If this right, and if so as our site is OScommerce can we get a patch to convert it? I am also not entirely sure how CSS works so any info greatfully recieved
Proper CSS and XHTML is an important factor no doubt, but definately not the key to taming se's. The problem with 'plain old html' is the use of tables and a lot of useless code, which means a lot of markup, where CSS could do the trick a lot faster and with a lot less code. As far as SEO, (bad) html cause increased loading and broken tags cause disruptions, when loading. So, if there's a broken tag, it might cause some important content to be overlooked. Browsers try to fixed this on the go so it appears somewhat decent, while some believe spiders just move on. CSS is by far the better choice, but I doubt it's the one single factor that destroys the rankings completely. Title tags, proper use of headings etc. are just as important in my opinion, so it's a combination of a lot of different things that tames the serps...
This is not true. You can rank good if you use CSS and also good if you don't use CSS . CSS can just make your code more readable. Text will not be "broken", as maybe will be if you use tables. But you can also use CSS and never rank well . This is small thing in doing SEO, other things are much important such as BL's, quality unique content etc..
CSS is super important for ranking well on the web. The main reason is that it removes all table/font/style code that would otherwise be there with regular html. That means that your content is higher on the page and the se's don't have to sift through so much garbage. Yes regular ol' html still works but it's not pretty. If you had 2 sites with the same content, backlinks, tags etc. but one of them used a complete css layout, the css site would win hands down in the serps. Go with CSS. It makes a difference. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
You should use CSS to remove things like <font> tags and to style h1 tags but its not needed for your general layout. Tables work absolutely fine for any site. Do you really think that google would show one site higher than another just becuase it uses CSS? Google wants to show the best and most relevant results not the site thats designed the best.
It is so annoying when people or companies come out and make generalized statements like, "if you dont do this one thing, you'll never get good rankings" I wish there was one magic thing you could do to get high rankings but there isnt. It is a balance of the tried and tested white hat techniques that you "have to do" and even then your not guaranteed to rank for anything. And it would be in your best interest to end the conversation with any SEO "expert" that says otherwise.
Using proper css helps the search engine bots crawl your site as it reduces the amount of code on a page, leaving more space for the content. Also valid css and xhtml which is cross browser compatible can ensure visitors to your website can actually view it - the whole point of getting a good ranking in the serps is so that people can view your site, if they click on your serp listing and can't properly view your website then whats the point?
Wow! thanks everyone.......I feel a little better about not having css but will make investigations into how to convert I think, and see what happens!
Very interesting thread. I'd love to hear more "expert" opinions. One question for those who believe that CSS makes a significant difference: If CSS allows for shorter and more concise code, and this therefore allows the bots to read relevant information easier, would it make sense that this argument hold true to INCLUDEDS? - thanks DP friends!
How so? I assume you mean PHP includes etc., right? As that would be serverside, and thus have no bearing on the code presented to the user/bot, why would it make any difference? One of the main benifits of CSS is that is seperates markup from layout. You can't tell if a page has serverside includes, but CSS is easily spotted when viewing the source code. Maybe I'm not understanding you right, but I fail to see the resemblance...