XHTML and CSS: Better for Search Engines?

With the ongoing battle to control or at least to understand search engines we as designers are trying to get a grasp on what works as well. There are those that stick to the "table based" design and thus have lines and lines of code. Ultimately resulting in the search bot only crawling so far. Or as I like to say the bot gets "tired" and leaves for rest.

Recently I have been doing some research and discovered numerous SEO experts and articles that state that using XHTML and CSS is more "search engine friendly." And let's be honest it's a lot less code and easier to update. From experience I have designed sites that have no search engine optimization to it but are getting page ranks. Whereas sites that I have built table wise have no ranking and when they finally do get ranked it's a long time afterwards.

Here are some useful tips:

1. Search Engines like list items -

Keyword Here

- so it's best to put your navigation in list items.

2. Use header tags when you have the chance -

My Site Name

- these appear as items of high importance to the bot as well.


Ultimately utilizing XHTML and CSS you are leaving all of your images, fonts, colors, sizing etc. in a separate document and all that is in the html is content. Bots like the keywords. Although tables are still a workhorse in this rapid growing industry, XHTML is better suited for SEO Campaigns. These views are not the end all be all of SEO campaigns, this is just a point a view and hopefully you will consider your options when building web sites.

If you wish to learn more please vist www.alistapart.com/seo

Happy Campaigning!!!