CSS-based vs. Table-based Layout for SEO

by Abdo on August 6, 2009

Hi All,

In the free website review, I'm offering through Al-Adham, the first point I was always highlighting is the table-based layout and its negative effect on SEO, I remember that had been a part of every CSS course/book I went through. Just revisiting the issue today and getting to the interesting "Google Webmaster Help" YouTube channel, as the final word in SEO will be always from Google, that video clarified the issue for me.

So, according to Google it doesn't make a difference from an SEO point of view whether a table-based or CSS-based layout is utilized in the site, but I'm still an advocate to CSS-based layout for so many reasons.

May be the way I learned from HTML Dog, and Lynda.com was all going for a semantic, W3C complaint markup.

It still a good idea for every website owner to subscribe to Google Webmaster Help's YouTube channel, I think it's a great resource for simplified, trusted information.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp

All the best

- Abdo

Sharing Link: http://developerman.com/zpysv7

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  • http://www.alfystudio.com Ahmad Alfy

    Tables for layout is REALLY a bad idea… Just when the table border property came out (border=”0″) and it’s been a race to write the markup using tables to get around the CSS headache.
    But I also believe if you used table together will semantic html ( tags for title, for navigation … etc ) you ill have some sort of seo’ed website :)

  • http://www.alfystudio.com Ahmad Alfy

    meant >h< for title and >ul< but the comments filtered the tags :D

  • Abdo

    Yah, Agree.

    The whole idea for the markup to be semantic, to use everything for what it’s supposed to be used for, so Tables are for tabulated data and it should be only used for that. But the point is that if people still using tables for layout, it won’t make a difference for SEO, but it’s still semantically wrong.

    Welcome to my upcoming blog :) I was getting used to the 0 comments ;)

    - Abdo

  • http://www.alfystudio.com Ahmad Alfy

    Well nothing brings joy to me like comments :D
    and I love to watch ;)

  • socialmaker

    When it comes to servicii seo and seo services there are only a handful of companies who really know what they're doing. Only these know what content is all about, fixing site issues, URL canoniclization and rewrites and getting you a lot of links.

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