Cultivate Search Engine Positioning, Inc.

I just watched a video of Matt Cutts answering the question:

Is a website designed with a CSS-based layout more SEO friendly than a table based layout?

I was expecting Matt to say, yes in fact there are reasons CSS+XHTML works better for SEO.  He did not.  He basically said, use whatever works best for you. WOW.  Okay here are the problems I have with that:

1.) Less code = quicker load –   That’s right, less code means the page will load faster for both users and searchbots.  Tables tend to be riddled with td=align and a host of other tags that add up rapidly and throw off the content:code ratio. That translates to a less-then-stellar experience for both users and search engines and in the case of the latter with more time spent on each page less time can be spent indexing the rest of the website.

The ‘whatever works best for you’ logic is dangerous.  SEO aside, it’s all about the user’s experience and what’s best for the user.  Last time I checked a shorter load time is definitely appreciated by the average surfer.

With all that extra code comes a greater percentage of error.  Not closing a tag or forgetting a quote can create some interesting visual and content anomalies not only for the user but for the search engines.

2.) Placement on the page  – CSS allows us to place the more important content at the top of the code regardless of where it is on the page.  We know that content closer to the top of the page gets higher priority so why not utilize that knowledge.  I’m not trying to suggest gaming the engines by manipulating the code, but if your content is on the right and navigation and ads are on the left shouldn’t you make sure your content is the first thing the search engines see?

3.)  Purpose and Intent -  Tables were created for 1 thing and 1 thing only: displaying tabular data.  Then one infamous day we realized we could ‘hide’ the table with border=0 and the rest is history.  Here is a great look at how bloated tables are inherently and how needless table positioned websites are.

Despite all of this, Google claims to treat table and CSS-p the same regardless.  My opinion is that the claim made by Matt is misleading – the intrinsic value CSS positioned sites have over table sites make it by default a better option for SEO.