why use css for seo technique?

i've read several threads claiming you should use css instead of font tags? Why is this advantageous? Will it help my ranking that much? Thanks...

A lot of people have started using CSS on their sites. I only really use it to restyle my Hx tags so that they look more presentable.

The reason to use css is that once I get done doing the layout of my site I literally can change every color of every location on the page (everhting but the logo) in less than a minute.

I also can change the font size, relative sizes, and just about anything else. really really fast sitewide instead of changing the layout in 300 different pages.

Added benefit is that google doesn't see the difference in font sizes (it is widely believed that very small font sizes are ignored or labelled as spam)...


Also means you can use <h-tags> on any of the font on your site, simply by making a style which matches your general font size - so - you can present a one title to your surfers and another to the search engines.

tricky idea, i like it. is there anyway for the engines to read your css file though?

This is good, as most SE, IMHO love H and Bold tags. You can add some emphasis to specific keywords without sacrificing quality of the look.

Googlebot doesn't appear to be able to reference CSS files at the moment, but it won't be long before they are checking for CSS spam. I would suggest keeping your CSS completely clean and visitor orientated.

That's not to say there are no benefits to CSS. The main benefit in my opinion is one of getting rid of the junk, moving the content of the page to the top and moving the less important stuff to the bottom. This invariably improves the quality of your listing in the serps, and also puts more weight to your content.



BTW - changing the appearance of h1 tags is definitely NOT spam. They are dreadful as standard. I support that 100%. Making h1 look not like a title, or making a bold tag not bold.... I can't see any reason for that.

in addition to what awal19 was saying about making things much easier to maintain on your website. I believe google and others pay attention to things like the Web Accessability standards http://www.w3.org/WAI/ and using valid HTML. There are lots of little tid bits of info on google's webmaster tips pages. There is a site audit tool somewhere on the w3.org site. Try it out on your site.

the best thing about css is that you can position your content to be above your links and your images to appear at the bottom of a file in the html so the spider sees your most important parts of your page first whilst still keeping a nice site design....

Google still uses font tag on its site, so you have to worry about CSS for SEO.

I like that logic. I spotted the other day that the W3C schools CSS reference is built in tables.
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_reference.asp

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another great idea...im new to these forums (have been attempting seo for years), but ive been getting great ideas in a shorter period of time then reading articles on the web. however i am new to css and just started to implement it on my site. watcher, know of any good tutorial sites on css for how to do such a thing?

thanks guys

I learnt by taking somebody else's style sheet apart and finding out how it worked. You are welcome to download the style sheets from the sites in my sig. Both use CSS for layout and formatting.

There is a long list of resources at http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/learning
The W3C has the spec for CSS1 at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1
You'll also find some good books in your local bookstore.

I'm writing an "instant CSS" guide where you can download a starting point and then work from there. It isn't finished yet but should be up later this week.

Don't forget to check browser compatability for your finished design (particularly Netscape - it doesn't support a lot of CSS features very well).

:-D

I use CSS for every site every since it became commonplace. Universal changes happen all the time so it speeds up turn. Client always want to change something so using CSS makes it easier. Especially if you use css on every aspect of you site.
You can change the entire layout of a site after modifying one page. I also remove the css to see how the site will spider.

Another big advantage is that it counts down on your code - less font tags and other html in there... Helps to get your content higher up in the code and just makes things more clean...