Home: Message List - CSS is not the SEO silver bullet...

Re: CSS is not the SEO silver bullet...

AlexTampa — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:54:21 GMT

CSS can be used for changing the order they way things on page are read by the bot.

For example,. if you want your main content to be read before the navigation menu, but the navigation menu is displayed on top, you can easily do this with CSS.

Also, CSS can make your webpage load faster. This can produce better user behavior on site. Which google uses this for serp results.

Re: CSS is not the SEO silver bullet...

intechspecial — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 11:22:11 GMT

This is true but this is just one small portion of SEO.

CSS is more for functionality and design, and is not meant specifically for SEO.

Using meta tags, images, keywords in paragraphs and title tags is just a small portion of SEO.

Google does not care if you use CSS, Tables, XML, or other design types. There are many other methods to gain high SEO rankings.CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and this has to do with how the browser renders the code.

Search eninges take other things into there ranking of your site. How many keywords are on your site? How many links point at your site? What is the Page Rank of these sites?(page rank should not be confused with Search Engine Rank as they are completely different) Of these links that point to your site, how much traffic and such do they recieve? Is your site correctly designed to meet basic WAI standards.(Alt text next to images for example is relevant to accessibilty and not just CSS). Is your site doing anything "illegal" to super inhance your keywords? Is your site HTML or XHTML valid?

It might help to do a search on CSS and then do a search on white hat seo and/or black hat seo.

You will probably be able to understand better what I am saying.

I hope this helps.

Re: CSS is not the SEO silver bullet...

Mongoose — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 11:08:55 GMT

Yes, but CSS provides a clean layout for both usability purposes and content structuring, which helps along SEO.

Re: CSS is not the SEO silver bullet...

intechspecial — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:53:50 GMT

You really have to understand CSS to understand that CSS and SEO are not two relevant topics.

CSS is simply today's standards for designing the front end of static and dynamically loaded websites.

Comparing CSS to SEO is like comparing fruit to coffee.

Re: CSS is not the SEO silver bullet...

Mongoose — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:51:07 GMT

Amazing post, and i'll agree that while CSS is not a 'silver bullet', it can be an integral part of a well-formed webpage. As you stated, Good SEO comes from many different facets of a website. Good content, good structure, and plenty of networked material makes the system run. I wrote an article on here about SEO, but i forgot to mention these three points in full detail. In an analogy, those who think CSS is your answer-all to SEO, that would be like putting up a skyscrapers framework but forgetting the interior.

Re: CSS is not the SEO silver bullet...

intechspecial — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:37:26 GMT

I would have to agree with you on this one.

Re: CSS is not the SEO silver bullet...

tokyov — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 01:26:19 GMT

MTCreations is absolutely right. It takes ALL of the above for SEO. CSS is a very BIG part of item. Of course, you must know what you're doing to leverage the magic in CSS and optimization. Anyone who claims that properly used CSS does not help your rankings doesn't know what he/she is talking about, and may be trying to rip you off. Any service that claims they can guarantee rankings or traffic is full of it. I would run fast from any "professional" who gives you this line. In addition, any service that claims you need to resubmit your site monthly is full of it. These people are trying to make money off of you. If your site is linked and properly coded, the spiders will find you and visit often. However, you have to be up to standard to fully leverage the hidden magic of CSS and know how to write CSS as well as XHTML/XML for true optimization. You can't just attach a stylesheet with a bunch a colors and think that will boost traffic & rankings.

Re: CSS is not the SEO silver bullet...

blueoryx — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 20:30:03 GMT

Don't you hate the fact you can't edit your posts here!

anyway, I agree it has very little to do if anything at all for ranking.

I was pointing out that for big pages it is a whole lot less code to be cached and some search engines will not cache/index pages over a certain K. So CSS allows you to add more for less K.

That is the only SEO benifit to CSS

example of a horrific site: www.gt-t.net

I am currently putting this into semantic markup and 508 Compliance and have decreased the page code size 75% (not exact math, but you get the point). I also got rid of the JS menus and replaced them with alistapart's suckerfish nav.

anyway, bad development = www.gt-t.net current table design.

good development and faster page loads = Full CSS!!!!

Re: CSS is not the SEO silver bullet...

intechspecial — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 20:17:09 GMT

Please do not get me wrong, I value the network of talented professionals on this site

Re: CSS is not the SEO silver bullet...

intechspecial — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 20:15:26 GMT

I am sure you do great work as well, and I am willing to bet that I could learn alot from you.