CSS or not?

Hello,

Im new to Google optimization. Im planning to get my site optimized for the keyword "pocket pc"

www.PocketPC-Live.com which i started a week ago.

I use joomla and the template uses CSS styles, is this good for google?

In sitemap, im planning to include links to all news content items. In robots, im planning to disallow the forums sections. Is it right? Cz i think forums may contain of-topic discussions and i was very disappointed to see my old site where forum was allowed and all my site got optimized is for the user names

Please help me out. Thanx a million in advance.

Regards
Carty..

I've never noticed them dinging me for having css.

CSS based sites definitely have no issue with Google. Many people claim they get a boost in rankings by changing to CSS layouts from table layouts. Personally, I think they are smoking too much dope. Google doesn't really care how you code your site so long as they can read it and tell what is what. I think there are a lot of great reasons for coding using XHTML and CSS, but current day SEO is not really one of them. It may help in the future, but not today - and it certainlywon't hurt.

Thank you for your suggestions.

And regarding "In sitemap, im planning to include links to all news content items. In robots, im planning to disallow the forums sections. Is it right? Cz i think forums may contain of-topic discussions and i was very disappointed to see my old site where forum was allowed and all my site got optimized is for the user names" ??

Thank you again..?

Regards
Carty..

Anything that makes the spiders job easier has got to be beneficial in my book. Therefore, seperating content and style has got to be a good thing. It may not have a massive weight in terms of improving SERPS at present but it would not do any harm and, Google are more likely to alter their algorithms in the future in favour of web standard websites.

Don't do that! Forums=content=clicks=money



I don't get this. If your page is cached then the spider didn't have a problem with it. There is no 'easier' only yes or no, 1 or 0, true or false.

Css is fine and actually my preference because of its usability and ease. Tables are hard sometimes because they won't position correctly and having too many tables within tables within tables can get to be a problem with Google. I usually have a main table without borders which is the container for my site and then use css to position everything. I like css because you can create a image and then position images and text over top of the other image.

And about the forums. I have nevered use robots disallow on anything except demo pages I did not want my spiders getting caught in
Don't do that to your forums. Let them crawl them. I find forums are awesome for getting crawlers because they are usually updated quite frequantly.