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Jennifer's Web Design / HTML Blog

By Jennifer Kyrnin, About.com Guide to Web Design / HTML since 1997

SEO Reports - Tables for layout affect your SEO efforts

Sunday December 21, 2008

I talk about this all the time, I know, but tables are just not a good idea for layout. Another reason why they aren't as good is that you can't place the most important (and relevant) content at the top of your HTML. So search engine spiders read the HTML and since they give higher relevance to content found first on the page, things like navigation in a table-based layout, will be considered most important. As the left-side navigation comes first in the HTML table. If you're serious about SEO, you'll consider retiring the table-based layout and using CSS instead.

Here are this week's reports:

If you would like your page reviewed for SEO effectiveness, just fill out the form here: Get Your Web Page Reviewed for SEO. Remember that it could take several months or more before your page is reviewed, so please don't submit it multiple times. Thanks!

Comments

December 24, 2008 at 5:22 am
(1) Web design web designer says:

the sites with table less design get high PR in comparison to the sites designed with tables. even if the count of the back links are few.

April 28, 2009 at 3:25 am
(2) Flash Web Design says:

Yes
Search engines cannot understand table layouts

May 2, 2009 at 4:47 pm
(3) okinawa says:

This has been my experience with tables also, go full CSS.

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