Re-designing - What is most important ?

Hi All

Just a quick question. I am re-designing my website and want to know what are the most important things i should include and follow to help me with my page rank and also search results in Google. I know the usual answer is keywords ... but....

ive just been told that my use of tables instead of css for my layout does not help. Also i have just changed my doctype to the strict one and realised i fail in many w3c tests. Does all this effect pagerank and search results.

I normally specialise in Databases which is why my basic knowledge of simply complying to standards is poo.

Any help is much appreciated.

Alex James

 

h1, h2, h3

layout (menu first or content first)
color (for reader)
link structure and the name of the page

use XHTML 1.0 Strict if you can, or transitional if have too.
Don't use 1.1, tooooo hard

 

I'd just go for the usual stuff KD, TT, H1, linnks, content etc

 

you would want to consider the following imho:

Titles (make them unique, and keyword strong)
Use Heading Tags to describe your page
Make use of keyword proximity and bold specific keywords inside your articles
use tableless html with css
write quality content (you will get linked to fast)

good luck

 

Thanks for you help, i will defo start putting these in.

I use tables for pretty much everything, main template, links on the left, content seperation etc. So this is a defo no no?

 

If you redesign your site, it is better to have a new w3c compatiable design .
It means tableless layout and DIV+CSS layout .

 

For your users, The navigation is important, A re-design means previuos users may not know how to get to the things they want.

For SEO purposes.
Mirror your page title in H1 Tags, Use some, h3/h4/h5 in your content
Give alt and title tags for images.

Dont use tables, Unless its for text data purposes.

hope that helps

 

It's better to use CSS, avoid tables, be W3c compliant etc...but I don't think any of these affect SERPS positions. I read a long interview with Matt Cutts a few days ago where he said as much, that 95% of sites weren't compliant so why would they penalise them.
So the two things are pretty much separate.
All the other stuff - title, H1, H2 etc, good content, DOES matter though.

 

Thanks All

I also have my links in a seperate php file which i just 'php-include' into the index page and other template pages. Does this also affect SEO ?

 

content and backlinks with your keyword.

 

How does table exactly do anything for SEO, never understood that...

 

Thanks to sharing this information.

 

h1, h2, h3

layout (menu first or content first)
color (for reader)
link structure and the name of the page

use XHTML 1.0 Strict if you can, or transitional if have too.
Don't use 1.1, tooooo hard

thanks