Forum Moderators: open
Is this true ?
Regards
Malcolm
Would I recommend you change the site at this point? I’d have to look at the site before making that determination but probably not. With the exception of a few elements (content and title tag for example) I feel that SEO is a battle of inches. Usually one single element does not make or break the typical site. However, each tactic you utilize increases the tolerance stack to your benefit. As with almost all SEO, most of us can drum up examples of where this is also not true.
Though I would have to say that WW gained traction when table layout was the standard.
As an aside, I always find it interesting when I see the tactics utlized on mature sites owned by enterprises with mass-media budgets. "Big" sites get away with more than small sites.
It's a fallacy that table code in any way harms rankings. The SE's don't give a whoot. As long as the code it tight, sparse and absent bloat, as it the case on this site, the site has nothing to worry about.
Granted, these days given the choice I'd go CSS ... but more because I have some vague belief that my flexibility into the future is going to be greater as a result.
I'm also a believer in SEO being a game of inches, especially in very competitive categories. But this issue is into a game of millimeters (again, as long as the code is tight). When this first became a topic of conversation years ago, we decided to split the launch of some new sites and introduce half with css, half with tables. We also made an effort to split them up so that similar sites were launched both ways. There will never be a perfect real world test for something like this, but after years of staring at the results, if I can't see a difference in the rankings between the two that I could correlate to code choices, and so I long ago stopped caring. Gimme a good programmer who blends code over a CSS purist any time.
Theory is great. Real world experience is always better.
My largest site uses tables for layout and ranks well in it's niche. I think quality, unique content outranks the css vs tables debate.
To be clear, the point I was trying to make is simply that this tables vs. CSS debate is such a small element in the overall picture.
If one has their content pushed way down in the code because of bad coding, that is a different matter. CSS sites do tend to get the content higher, but that is less a tables issue than an overall bad coding issue on tables sites.
As Excellira suggests, we also work to eliminate non-essential code from the source page. That's really the main point. Keep it clean and lean and you'll be fine.
* Page load can affect rankings (back button - millimeters again)
* Code to content ratio & dup content
* Positioning of content within the HTML flow
* KW prominence
Inches and more inches.
Also, the WW site, while it does use table layout, has some fairly lean code. In that case, as I stated originally, it probably wouldn't be worthwhile spending the time, at least at this point, to correct it. I suspect however that if WW were redesigned tomorrow that CSS would be utilized and tables would be used for tabular data.
So, even though I'm a noob on WW, thanks for the great dialog and your support on the forum.
