SEO Wars: table vs div with CSS
Dec 14
It’s a common question and it has answers highly skewed by viewpoint. However, there is an answer and it’s here. This may be “over your head” but you’ll also want to know the answer if you ever buy web development or SEO for your site and the SEO analyst makes a recommendation like, “you need to have your site redesigned because your webmaster ________” (tables or css).
CSS is newer than tables ergo some people find it sexier … why we even use “sexy” to determine a level of coolness I don’t know. Be that as it may CSS is more “Web 2.0″ kind of like Starbucks is cool because it’s not the corner gas station or iPhone is cool because a few cool people said it’s cool. Cadillac makes an awesome car incomparable in many ways but Lexus is perceived as cooler. Why? Maybe it’s marketing.
Long before there was CSS there were tables and tables were the way to layout web pages. I have opened the backend of some sites and seen some incredibly hilarious table layouts with tables nested in tables inside of cells inside of rows and columns. In fact I have nested two deep myself.
Tables can be sized by hard numbers or by percentages. Tables display the same cross browser. All browsers render tables the same way. Tables, rows, columns, and cells can be named and given an ID and controlled with CSS. Tables can have border, no border, border style and be manipulated in other ways. You can create a template to be used to change an entire site but …
CSS can be changed across the site without having to go into every page and make changes to the hard coded layout. Components can be loaded in fixed places or floated. Each element can have it’s own design, borders, backgrounds, font … not unlike table cells. Some browsers munge the CSS and without proper care difference size displays can also munge the layout.
But what about SEO?
I’m so glad you asked. It’s an often asked question, which is better for seo, tables or css? Look no further, the authority speaks:
