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| | The Internet Marketing Tools Network is not currently active and cannot accept new posts | | Will CSS make more for more SEO friendly website | Views: 813 | | May 18, 2005 7:15 pm | | Will CSS make more for more SEO friendly website | # | 
Dean H. | | I was on the phone with another Ryzer this morning who deals in SEO and internet marketing solutions. One of the topic of conversations was the use of and the trend towards using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) when designing sites. I confess to having little knowledge about CSS. But from what I've read, it seems that CSS is the future of design and it will play a major role in making your website more SEO friendly.
How does this work? Why CSS is more friendly than HTML?
My knowledge is limited, but can any of the designers and/or SEO experts who have knowledge of this arena expand on this subject and/or offer some web resources on this topic?
DeanPrivate Reply to Dean H. | | May 18, 2005 7:35 pm | | re: Will CSS make more for more SEO friendly website | # | 
Frank Michlick | | I think the main difference would be a clear separation of content and layout/design components. The search engines are mainly interested in content, so this would be one of the ways how it helps the search engines.
I am sure others have more to add here ;-)
/Frank Private Reply to Frank Michlick | | May 19, 2005 12:33 pm | | re: Will CSS make more for more SEO friendly website | # | 
Sarah Lewis | | I'd agree that CSS is the future (and present, for many of us) of design, for many reasons. Here are some as they relate to SEO:
- Many designers have shunned the "h1", "h2", etc. tags because, well, in their unaltered state, they're generally pretty ugly. Trouble is, most search engines depend on these tags and others like them to prioritize information—something in an "h1" tag is theoretically very important, and neglecting these tags can mean missing out on keyword relevance as measured by search engines. Enter CSS. These tags can now be styled to look however the designer wants, while still maintaining the formal structure in the HTML file that helps the search engines do their jobs.
- As Frank mentioned, CSS helps separate content from layout. Not only does this make the file easier to read and modify, but it means that your file will have a greater proportion of relevant keywords (as opposed to utilitarian markup tags). This will make more of a difference for some search engines and less for others, but it won't hurt, and could be helpful.
- Just as CSS styling can make the previously unfashionable "h1" tag useful again, CSS can change the way things in the file are rendered on screen—even the order in which they're displayed. Some search engines decide what is most and least important based at least partly on where keywords appear within the HTML file—my optimization program emphasises the opening paragraph and closing paragraph particularly. However, sometimes I want something different at the top of the page (or the bottom; think the boring footer information). With CSS, that's no problem. I just reorder the layout with CSS and then I'm happy with the layout, and the search engines have a good idea what is relevant in my copy and what is not.
There are probably many other SEO arguments for CSS, but for most people, the most compelling reason for using CSS is that it makes it easier to keep pages looking sharp with minimal effort. For instance, if I want to change the entire look of my site, there's no need for me to change the HTML; I just make the appropriate changes in my CSS. CSSZenGarden is an excellent example of this. This idea is not necessarily directly related to SEO, except that it might make it more likely that you'll continue to actively develop the page when you're happy with the design.
SarahPrivate Reply to Sarah Lewis | | Jun 14, 2005 11:29 pm | | re: Will CSS make more for more SEO friendly website | # | 
Peter Davis | | Yes, but the difference will be so slight that 99.999% of webmasters wouldn't notice it. The difference to SEO would be that it removes a lot of repetitive tags from your files, thus making your content ever so slightly easier to access. Private Reply to Peter Davis | | Jun 15, 2005 5:17 am | | re: re: Will CSS make more for more SEO friendly website | # | 
Craig Kiessling | | I agree 100% with Sarah.
With CSS, any element can by "styled".
And it's not just the (originally I put actual tag here, and then saw it parsed it, making the rest of this message huge and bold - looks like u really don't need to upgrade membership for html to work...) Header 1 thing - it's also bold and strong and emphasis and italics and links and much more...You can now use basic elements for mark-up, style them in the CSS file, and have spiders, bots, engines or humans, be able to recognize the "important" parts in your content, to see if it is relevant to their search...And that does pay off... Private Reply to Craig Kiessling | | Jun 15, 2005 5:39 am | | re: re: re: Will CSS make more for more SEO friendly website | # |
Peter Davis | | That's not really a new thing Craig, we've been styling our header tags for years. Private Reply to Peter Davis | | |
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