Search Engine recognition - DIV tag inside A HREF tag

[supernatural_247]

I'm using CSS to create hover buttons here:

Rooms for Rent, Homes for Rent, Roommates, Apartments and Homes for Sale

However, there is a huge gap in space in Firefox and Opera where it looks great in IE.

I can fix it in my style sheet by putting the padding-top:20px in a new style that looks like this:

#homepost a div { padding-top:20px }

and remove the padding from the #homepost a style

however, I'm concerned that the div tag inside the a tag will mess up how the SEs read the link text. Will SEs read only the text in the link or will they read the div tag as well?


by way of a side note, I posted this in Accessibility but I don't think it was the right area to post in. Mods, can you delete that thread please?

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by supernatural_247

however, I'm concerned that the div tag inside the a tag will mess up how the SEs read the link text. Will SEs read only the text in the link or will they read the div tag as well?

Every search engine can read a link in divs. That is obviously not an issue to be discussed.

Or do you mean something like this: <a href="test.html"><div>this is invalid markup</div></a> ?

[supernatural_247]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Or do you mean something like this: <a href="test.html"><div>this is invalid markup</div></a> ?

Yes. So I assume this is incorrect. I can't understand why the styles aren't showing correctly in both browsers! Grrrrr....

Both IE and FF seem to render the link just fine, but I'm worried that the SEs will read the link text as '<div>this is invalid markup</div>' instead of 'this is invalid markup'.

Edit---

I see the error of my ways. My doc and html tags were invalid, and once I changed the doctype to XHTML 1.0 Transitional, I'm presented with a much more precise layout that looks the same in both IE and FF (although I'm sure I'll run across something that doesn't work right in both)

[Webnauts]

If you have questions about code issues, you should post them in the design forum.
This forums is about Search Engine Optimization.

Thanks.

[incrediblehelp]

Moved to Graphics & Design Discussion Forum Forum

[dharrison]

Originally Posted by supernatural_247

however, I'm concerned that the div tag inside the a tag will mess up how the SEs read the link text. Will SEs read only the text in the link or will they read the div tag as well?

You are correct, <div> tag inside <a> will not work. It needs to be the other way around. W3C will probably also scream at you if you tried to validate the page.

Try this setup and you should be OK. If not then try to add padding to just #homepost
That bit is really trial and error.

HTH