CSS vs HTML - Is there a certain way a site should be designed for SEO?

[redpill]

I'm just wondering if the site design, css, html, source code, etc makes a difference w/ seo. I ran it all through w3:

http://validator.w3.org/

and it's good to go.

Just wondering if I should use HTML or CSS etc?

Maybe the names of the images, css should be keyword targeted?

Maybe the code should be hand written HTML so that it's slightly different on each page?

Thanks for any help on this...

 

[nethead01]

as long as its good with w3 then you shouldnt have any problem, just make sure you do good onpage seo which you need to add you meta tags and footer and the norm.. but i dont think it will matter whether its written in CSS or just HTML

you should have alt image tags with you keywords in them for better onpage

 

[redpill]

For some reason sites that have html and each page randomly updated with less uniformity seem to have a slight advantage.. maybe I'm off?? Anyone else see this? Thanks..

 

[Mokodoki]

Just wondering if I should use HTML or CSS etc?

Maybe the names of the images, css should be keyword targeted?

Maybe the code should be hand written HTML so that it's slightly different on each page?

Thanks for any help on this...

There should never be a website designed with HTML or CSS... If you have a big website, you may strongly desire a CMS in which cage you have a few options. However, if you're going for a static website, you're going to be using HTML and CSS.

Your CSS needs to be written legibly, not stuffed with keywords. Your SEO should be done with your HTML, not your CSS.

I don't know why you would want your HTML to look "slightly different" on each page? It will vary from page to page due to your content anyhow.

 

[redpill]

Do you think that if there were 2 designers and the end result looked exactly the same, both passed w3 validation.. 1 would have a better shot at ranking than the other?

That's kind of what I'm trying to figure out. B/c I don't really understand what's going on behind the scenes with the design and I want to make sure it's being done right...

Thank.

 

[Mokodoki]

Do you think that if there were 2 designers and the end result looked exactly the same, both passed w3 validation.. 1 would have a better shot at ranking than the other?

That's kind of what I'm trying to figure out. B/c I don't really understand what's going on behind the scenes with the design and I want to make sure it's being done right...

Thank.

The friendliness of a site to Google is entirely dependent on how you have your site set up. You can achieve the same look using 100s of different methods of coding, but some will obviously perform better than others. "Being done right" means that every single page is SEO optimized to the best of your ability whether it's HTML or dynamic (not CSS files). The only really important thing when it comes to making your own themes with HTML/CSS/whatever is that you make your code easy for spiderbots to read. You can certainly rank a jarbled up piece of crap coded website in Google (just like you can rank an info domain), but clean and readable code has an inherit advantage.

If your website is going to be large, or you're not designing this yourself, I'd recommend using a CMS instead like Wordpress with an SEO friendly theme. This makes it much easier for you to SEO optimize every page without having to code so much.

 

[redpill]

Thanks for your input... Which CMS would you recommend?

 

[wahidpolin]

as long as u r creating html/css pages u don't need to worry abt anything even w3 doesn't matter.But you have to 301 redirect your duplicate domains to one particular url from webmaster tools..and it's good to go and after sometime check webmaster tools to check any duplicate titles and crawler errors.

 

[DamageX]

I can see full CSS being a bit better than HTML or HTML + CSS, as the amount of code is a lot less, compared to the amount of actual content. But I can't say whether this would give you any SEO advantage.

 

[Mokodoki]

I can see full CSS being a bit better than HTML or HTML + CSS, as the amount of code is a lot less, compared to the amount of actual content. But I can't say whether this would give you any SEO advantage.

CSS is a language designed to give style to your page, not structure. You cannot style something that does not have a structure. You don't use CSS or HTML, they're a package deal.

With that being said, most people here use Wordpress as a CMS as it is definitely the most supported and user friendly. You can get a variety of SEO-ready themes depending on what you want to use your site for (Thesis and Headway are two of the most popular) or just get a non-SEO oriented theme and use the SEO All-in-One plugin.

 

[N1CHOLAS]

For some reason sites that have html and each page randomly updated with less uniformity seem to have a slight advantage.. maybe I'm off?? Anyone else see this? Thanks..

Does a site have to be w3 strict to rank well -- absolutley not. It's the coder geeks that tell you that because they find it frustrating we ignore "web standards".

Less uniformity is key. Dont start every page with a h1 or mix up the h tags on pages you don't care about. Seems they robots are on to over optimisation now.

 

[N1CHOLAS]

people here use Wordpress as a CMS as it is definitely the most supported and user friendly. You can get a variety of SEO-ready themes depending on what you want to use your site for

just a warning stay clear of sites offering free themes they are riddled with hidden backlinks.

 

[mahesh10]

Content is main important for SEO point of view.So, when you are designing one SEO friendly site, you must give priority to the content and also to the key words used in the content.

 

[DamageX]

CSS is a language designed to give style to your page, not structure.

From its inception, yes. No longer the case, you can use CSS to structure a page just fine.

You cannot style something that does not have a structure.

See above.

You don't use CSS or HTML, they're a package deal.

OK, agreed there, you can't separate the two, but you can keep the HTML to a minimum and define A LOT in your CSS and keep it external, thus allowing for an overwhelming percentage of content vs code on your main pages.

 

[Patrick.T]

Yeah ofcourse if you already done w3 validation,its good.Now you need to go for on page SEO.As first step you need to find your keyword that you are willing to target and to rank on the SERPs. One should always try putting some keywords related to the content in his title.The titles should be unique to each page as the content of each page is unique too.Use ALT tags if you use a picture,give variations of your keyword format,Provide a link on your keywords(internal linking),give LSI keywords,meta tag optimization,link optimization.