Hey all, I have just finished converting one of my sites from a Dreamweaver made HTML table layout with a ton of errors and was a complete mess to a hand coded very slick validating CSS design. I have kept all the same content for all the pages. I am number one in my niche at the moment but I wonder what is going to happen when the search engines see a whole new site? Ultimately the page load is much smaller and there is very little code in the pages now compared to before, it felt like there was more code than content before but now it feels like I have more content than code. Maybe taking so much care over my site is going to be my downfall, that would be sad if it is true but I would love to hear from others and especially if you have ever redesigned a site to validate in the past, what happened to your site in search engines?
Well, technically speaking, markup or more specifically, standards compliant vs. not, has nothing to do with serps related matters. I frankly which it did. All in all though, it stands to reason that cleaner markup would equal better returns based solely on the fact that google has less crap to sort through to read the meat of your website. I am one of those who thinks standards compliant markup separates the men from the mice. But I just opine.... hope that puts your mind at ease... you should be fine. Nigel
Nigel has is spot on imo; Matt Cutts actually mentioned that validation wasn't a factor since the majority of the internet doesn't validate. Valid CSS over tables, however, just makes sense - from an SEO perspective, as Nigel said, it makes more neater, shorted code, and less crap for spiders to trawl through - it also makes it easier to variate content position (ie what the spiders sees vs what the viewer sees... content at the top of the code could show up on the bottom of the page thanks to css) It also helps you prepare for the future - validation mightn't be a factor now, but i'd dare bet it'll be considered at some point down the line
I wish I had known earlier on what matt cutts shared about validation and serps. This would have saved me alot of concern and time. This information has been very helpful for my seo work. Thanks for sharing.