CSS Destroyed My Rankings

[pebblez]

I had used a table based design for years, and I had good rankings on all of my keywords. Recently i changed over to a pure css design including the use of h1 tags, divs instead of cells, the whole works.

When the site was finished I uploaded it to the web and waited. A week later my rankings started dropping. First they dropped in google. Then they started dropping in yahoo. Msn has been fine, but who cares.

Can anyone tell me what I've done wrong?
The new site can be seen at http://pebblez.com
One page of the old site can be seen at http://pebblez.com/index2.html

I really appreciate any advice you can give me. Thanks

[Dubbya]

Changing your site from table-based layout to pure CSS is a MAJOR change.

Google seems not to appreciate major site-wide changes as they're usually indicative of spam. If your text to code ratio has changed significantly, Google might be worried that your domain has been overtaken by yet another spammy advertiser.

Most often, they'll penalize these sites to discourage this sort of thing, so this might be what you're experiencing. Resubmit your site map and your rankings should pick up after a few weeks.

My site went AWOL for six weeks until I resubmitted my sitemap and sent an email requesting reinclusion in the Google index, so that's something else you can do.

Give it some time. It takes a few weeks to be reincluded, so use that time to fine tune your SEO efforts and get everything ship-shape.

Here's a handy article that might be of some help:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/reincl...request-howto/

[incrediblehelp]

Besides the table and CSS code nothing else has changed?

1. Content?
2. URLs?
3. New competitors?

Google has been updating in the past few weeks as well.

I have changed plenty of websites over. The only time I really see major drops is when URLs switching is not handled properly.

[incrediblehelp]

As most know here I am not a big fan of text to code being that important in the overall SEO side of things. Here is recent post from WPN's Joe Lewis that discusses it more:

Can Coding Affect Your Search Ranking

[pebblez]

First thank you both for your help.

Thats whats so weird! I did not change any of the words, or pictures. The URL's are all exactly the same, and its definitely not added competition that is doing this to me, some of my keywords im losing 200 spots. I even added a few pages of content to fill out spots that were lacking

and I think my code to content ratio should be better now...although I could be analyzing it wrong

I just can't see why doing everything right, making the site more accessible, faster loading, and giving it cleaner code, should cause a significant drop in rankings. Stupid me I thought it might even help...a little

[incrediblehelp]

Do you know how much your link totals and quantity have changed in the past 6-12 months?

[Gary Golden]

It has not effected my rankings, checked your site seems alright, noticed that you do not have a site-map, I link to my site map on all pages.

> Noticed that you do link to your main page on all pages.

I have been off google for months now with-in the last several day I am back though I spent the last couple of weeks making sure that every page linked back to my main page and whola, at the top of GOOGLE again though do not know how long that will last and I also use CSS on both of my sites.

[pebblez]

IBL's? I gain about 100 a month these days according to yahoo. As far as my sites linking structure I didn't really change it, although I did make a standard nav bar for every section of my site, which has made things a little more uniform.

As far as a sitemap I have a google site map (am looking for a decent ROR sitemap generator) I also link to my homepage from every page.

I do have a theory and if someone could take a look at this I would really appreciate it. In my header I have an H1 tag around the first text on the page, and its just about the first thing that shows up in the code. At the top of the header div I have a black picture background and at the bottom I have set the background to just be white. The text in the H1 is black and would show up against that black background, but I have added margins to the H1 to move it down.

Could the search engines inability to read the css margins on my H1 cause them to think I'm hiding black text against a black picture in an H1 tag right at the top of my page? Can google even tell the picture is black?

I would really appreciate any feedback on this.

[Seopro]

This took me about 2 minutes to find your problem. Doing your website in CSS is not enough. Go to the W3C and validate your code. You have 36 errors on your front page. Fix those and I bet your rankings will improve
Don
Seopro

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by Seopro

This took me about 2 minutes to find your problem.

Care to share exactly what that is? Simply saying validate code is pretty vague.

[Seopro]

The W3C has an html validator on their site. Bring that up and type in or paste your URL in the top box and it will show you how many errors on the page. I do this with every page I upload. You can also check the code by uploading a file to the validator before it is uploaded.
Don

[incrediblehelp]

Yeah Ii know, but you said you identified their problem. Having non-valid code doesnt stop you from being indexed or being ranked at the top of the SERPs.

[Seopro]

I think all search engines are members of the W3C and I believe they will place a site written in standards above a site that is not with all things being equal. I have never failed to put a site in the top 10 that had valid code. That has just been my observation. On one key phrase affordable seo company oregon I have #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #10 even though there is hardly any competition. On affordable web design company (yahoo) I have been #1 for 14 months with valid code. And on google I have a #1 with a PR2 ahead of a PR6 because I have valid code and he does not. I have notice this several times with not just myself but with other designers that use web standards.
We all have our own ideas which is great and that is why I joined this forum. I will learn something from others if I take part in the discussions and hopefully I have some knowledge to pass on to others.

[incrediblehelp]

I agree seopro, valid code is better than not. My point was only that you said the reason why pebblez rankings are tanking was because of in-valid code. I dont believe that to be true.

[Seopro]

That brings up another subject that Matt Cutts did not answer in his blog but it is a possibility. Does a search engine skip over some or all invalid code so it is not indexed? My search engine spider did but I do not think that is proof because other times it will index things. Will google's spider skip over id="row" when it shows up more than once? If you use class="row" then it will read it correctly. I don't think there is a way to find that question out other than a wild guess. LOL now you have me thinking and I am not use to doing that.
Don
Seopro

[BigOakSEO]

I just did a check in Google for a term on your site, Glowing Stone Onyx, and you were number one in Google. Maybe during this latest update period you are seeing a datacenter that doesn't have you in mix. I'm on the east coast and your rankings look okay. Was there a particular term you were checking?

[krisidious]

my site was sitting about 57th in the rankings for the term "House Plans" and about 30th for the term "Custom House Plans" I was recently convinced to rebuild by the folks here at WPW...

with some key help from a certain "justtryingtohelp" I switched my site from imagemap navagation to CSS...

I also fixed a lot of small html errors...

now I sit at 47 for the term "House Plans"
and I rank 4th for the term "Custom House Plans"

I would look elsewhere for the loss in rank...

[corvettehunt]

1 - There are many errors that need to be fixed. Use the W3C validator:
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://pebblez.com

You jumped your error count from 7 to 36.

2 - Trim your spaces. You got text that is broken by linebreaks all over the place, that in your original page where ok. I.E:
"Rustic
Stone Home Decor"
Instead of:
"Rustic Stone Home Decor"

Basically you are losing a lot of keywords because of that, for you won't rank anymore for "rustic stone", "rustic stone home", or any derivatives. The same happens all over the place!

---------
Fix those 2 points (which is fairly simple to do BTW), and wait for the next reindexation. You should do a lot better... good luck ;)

[iany]

There has to be something other than changing to tableless design at work here. I have changed plenty sites from table design to CSS over last year and have had no problems with Google rankings. Quite the opposite. Have tended to gain a few places - unless already no 1 :0).

Having had a look at the source code, I am not surprised the html doesn't validate. You need to read up on use of divs in CSS. You cannot have more than one div id of the same name. (div class yes)

Ian

[weslinda]

Maybe Google decided that they didn't like any web sites using Yahoo Hosting. Pointing all over the place in your site to a Yahoo cart could make google mad. If you use Google Checkout, maybe you'll be first for all of your terms.

Okay, all kidding aside. I would recommend a cleanup of code. This is just good design, may or may not help in regards to your rankings.

Second, I would recommend trying to find your own cart for all checkouts. This simply will allow all content and visitors to stay on your site.

Third, I would review matching up your title's to your <h1> to your linking structure, as this should help as well.

Finally, I would look at privacy and security issues. Make sure your site has a privacy policy. P3P if you can put the time into it.

Oops, one more thing, make sure your pages have plenty of content, major changes to a site can spell trouble if there isn't a marked improvement in the site.

[dux]

It looks like you are using div id tags on multiple occassions in the same document, such as <div id="general2of3">

i believe you can only use a div id tag once, whereas you can use div class tags as many times as you like. you need to validate your page using a html validator. the returning document will list the errors you need to fix.

i changed from tables to css and my rankings increased, but the site validated.

[SemAdvance]

Design styling will have no effect on search rankings.

Poor html code however will trip up a search robot faster than any other issue involved with your site.

Instead of focusing on which issue caused the drop look at all issues and fix them.

Poor coding?? then validate, no sitemap? add one, poor interpage linking? fix it...there are over 100 parts to the algorithms not 1.

Whatever you do to improve your site will most often have a resultant improvement to your bottom line.

Also check domain registration dates...This one issue alone tells Google a great deal about how serious you are in building your business.

My dos centavos

[thebigdishman]

Hi

I have personally never liked CSS, and I have always prefered a traditional table design.

By the way your new site does not work at all well using Firefox.

Hope that helps a tiny bit at least.

[SemAdvance]

Originally Posted by weslinda

Maybe Google decided that they didn't like any web sites using Yahoo Hosting. Pointing all over the place in your site to a Yahoo cart could make google mad. If you use Google Checkout, maybe you'll be first for all of your terms.

Okay, all kidding aside. I would recommend a cleanup of code. This is just good design, may or may not help in regards to your rankings.

Second, I would recommend trying to find your own cart for all checkouts. This simply will allow all content and visitors to stay on your site.

Third, I would review matching up your title's to your <h1> to your linking structure, as this should help as well.

Finally, I would look at privacy and security issues. Make sure your site has a privacy policy. P3P if you can put the time into it.

Oops, one more thing, make sure your pages have plenty of content, major changes to a site can spell trouble if there isn't a marked improvement in the site.

?????

Most of the issues you have raised have little impact on rankings.

Google doesn't like Yahoo hosted sites????

That is just too far of a stretch .....point two has no bearing on rankings...matching title h1 and links does nothing of signifigance...plenty of sites ranked # 1 with no privacy policy posted.

[ran_dizolph]

@ seopro

google failed validation

as much as i agree that building validating websites is important, i don't agree with your theory that it has much to do with page rank.

[iany]

Yeh, meant to say that.
When designing using CSS, you must make sure it works on Firefox first and then make any amendments to sort out he non compliance of IE6. Fortunately IE7 is much better (not perfect).

That is why many folks still stick to tables. Tables are meant for data, not layout.

[marketing-helpersdotcom]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Yeah Ii know, but you said you identified their problem. Having non-valid code doesnt stop you from being indexed or being ranked at the top of the SERPs.

I agree, check out ESPN.com, Yahoo.com, CNN.com. They all rank well and they all have about 100 validation errors, and they all rank REALLY well.

Validation does matter in the sense that you want to make sure the spiders can access the entire page of all the pages in your site. Beyond that I wouldn't worry about it too much.

The time you spend cleaning up your code can be better used building quality inbound links.

[HHI_Golf_Guy]

Originally Posted by Dubbya

Google seems not to appreciate major site-wide changes as they're usually indicative of spam. If your text to code ratio has changed significantly, Google might be worried that your domain has been overtaken by yet another spammy advertiser.

What a load of malarky! If you change all of your page names and don't use 301's, then it could cause some problems. But the poster stated he kept the page names and most of the content the same.

If you read what the poster said, he also stated that he included H1 tags in his new layout. Chances are, he added other text content or H tags. He may have to re-work some of his on page SEO.

A bigger question would be if the rankings drop is consistent on all datacenters (check the cache to see if each datacenter has picked up the new layout).

Even if all of the cached pages are the new pages, that might not give us a clue as to what is going on. DC results are all over the place right now. I'm not sure if it's an update, or if it's another infamous "data push" problem. For example, I see a competitor site #1 on some DC's, and #135 on others. That's a big difference.

My advice? Check across a number of DC's over the next week or so. If rankings on all DC's are still tanked at that time, take another look at the changes you made to the on-page SEO (H tags, text, etc.). The structure change of tables to CSS didn't cause the problem.

[marketing-helpersdotcom]

Originally Posted by iany

Yeh, meant to say that.
When designing using CSS, you must make sure it works on Firefox first and then make any amendments to sort out he non compliance of IE6. Fortunately IE7 is much better (not perfect).

You can use a loose DOCTYPE on all your HTML pages:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

This will help with some of the differences in Firefox and IE.

Also, try to avoid using absolute values in your CSS. They can really mess up your layout at different resolutions and text sizes.

[schachin]

I noticed you have added a lot of words to your site and removed some others while removed things like 's' from the word tiles (Google sees tile and tiles as two different words).

Ok so by looking at the SEO toolbar in Firefox I can see that your kw percentages let's say for 'stone' were higher on the old page. Also you have no H1/H2 or H3 tags and fewer kw's in bold. One of your percentages (bold for the kw stone) is 2% lower than before. This would affect your ranking and depending on competitiveness it could do so dramatically.

I would start there. Hope this helps :)

[marketing-helpersdotcom]

Originally Posted by HHI_Golf_Guy

What a load of malarky!

In case you all don't know what malarky is....LOL!

ma·lar·key /məˈlɑrki/ –noun Informal.
speech or writing designed to obscure, mislead, or impress; bunkum:

Originally Posted by HHI_Golf_Guy

A bigger question would be if the rankings drop is consistent on all datacenters (check the cache to see if each datacenter has picked up the new layout).

I agree, it's possible it's a drop from an update. I wouldn't panic.

Do you have a Google sitemap installed?

The info Google gives you in the Webmaster tools may help you figure this all out. If everything checks out OK in the Google Webmaster tools then I would attribute it to an update and re-check your rankings in a couple days.

[Seopro]

Common sense tells me that since the search engines belong to the W3c they will give higher marks to a site with valid code. That is only one area out of 100 or 1000 areas that a search engine will rank for. I thing an interesting question is does any search engine skip over invalid code? The validator points out errors, does a search engine do the same thing? I always write valid code but that is my preference the same as I code by hand with very few mistakes and those are easy to fix. This is a subject that can go on forever because we are not engineers programing the spiders. It is just my opinion but what do I know I spent 15 years in the 3rd grade.
Don
Seopro

[southplatte]

Going on personal experience from a huge site redesign I recently performed, we went from a table based layout using a cgi script to build the data from the back end to an complete CSS based layout using php/mysql in the back end. Not only did we retain our #1 spot for our most prized keyword, in a matter of weeks we were picking up for all of our product names in searches and are number 1 for many of them accross the board. We not only changed page names, site layout, but web hosts also because we moved the site to our own in-house server. Also, much of the content changed, but not all.

So go figure. Figuring out Google is like figuring out the preciseness that the universe was created with. It just isn't going to happen any time soon.

I would follow some recommendation put forth already, regardless if you use tables or css for layout control:

1. Proper valid html code is necessary
2. Proper valid CSS is necessary
3. Proper content saturation with keywords is necessary
4. Site Maps are a large key, or at least proper navigation, and make the navigation show after the content (or so I have been told)
5. Make proper use of the Divs and their IDs.

If you have ten Divs with the same ID, why would Google, not get confused and think it was the same content repeated? It may just not be picking up all the content in the repeated Divs thinking it is duplicate, or it could be confusing the spider in some other way.

Make sure by using H1 tags and calling out some more keyword attention you have not over done it to the point that Google thinks there may be keyword stuffing happening, especially if it is getting hung up on the duplicate Div idea.

Anyways, best of luck to you and the site rankings.

[Refiner]

Originally Posted by dux

It looks like you are using div id tags on multiple occassions in the same document, such as <div id="general2of3">

i believe you can only use a div id tag once, whereas you can use div class tags as many times as you like. you need to validate your page using a html validator. the returning document will list the errors you need to fix.

i changed from tables to css and my rankings increased, but the site validated.

You are correct in saying that... if you assign a div id to 2 different elements in your document, you will have errors.

it is a good practice to use validators for checking your code as you can fix a lot of mistakes


here are some places to check for validation and compliance guidelines:
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
http://validator.w3.org/
http://www.outfront.net/tutorials_02...ompliance1.htm

[marketing-helpersdotcom]

Originally Posted by Seopro

I thing an interesting question is does any search engine skip over invalid code? The validator points out errors, does a search engine do the same thing?

I know that a spider will not skip over the code just because it is invalid. However, if the code is so improper that the spider can't access it (ie. page cannot be found in IE when your set it to show friendly HTTP error messages) then that is a different story. If that is the case the spider may skip over your Web site entirely.

I should also point out that browsers like IE and FireFox are more forgiving and will still display a Web page even though the code is poor. This is not the case with spiders. So I would advise installing a Google sitemap or using a spider simulator to check your Web pages, to ensure they all load up OK for the spiders.

[weslinda]

SEMAdvance...first, regarding the Yahoo hosting piece, did you not see it was a joke?

Second, regarding having your own cart, it most certainly would affect rankings as content pages are content pages, keeping content on your domain vs. Yahoo's is quite important. It also adds a bit of credibility to your visitors.

I'm not sure why you would think your title, description and H1 shouldn't match. They should all be on topic for your page and definately would help for search results. If nothing more than being more on topic for those reading the results and increasing your click count.

Finally, that's true, a lot do that without a privacy policy, but there isn't one merchant company with any ethics that will allow you to setup payment processing without one. Also, it gives more credence to your site and confirms it is a non-spam, non-phishing site.

Google recommends doing it, no reason you shouldn't.

A site can be done very well with CSS and DIV's and perform nicely even in IE6 if you simply don't try and cut corners.

Valid code is only part of the ranking process, other items will overrun that issue. If you have 47,900 IBL that www.espn.com has, then you can get by with screwing a few things up.

Here we're talking about small online shop, that doesn't have that kind of reputation yet.

Why is everyone so afraid of valid code and standards, why do people feel they are worthless to web site design?

Oh well, guess we should just tell everyone that shoddy work is okay, who cares if you get sued for not complying with US Section 508 accessibility laws?

[marketing-helpersdotcom]

Originally Posted by weslinda

Oh well, guess we should just tell everyone that shoddy work is okay, who cares if you get sued for not complying with US Section 508 accessibility laws?

I don't think anyone here disagrees with you weslinda. Good code is important, but in perspective to IBL's it's obviously not as much of a factor. Good code is certainly not going to rocket you to the top 10.

By the way, Section 508 on applies to federal agencies, not the private sector. I am an expert with section 508, I helped the DoD develop their 508 policies.

In 1998, Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act to require Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. Inaccessible technology interferes with an individual's ability to obtain and use information quickly and easily. Section 508 was enacted to eliminate barriers in information technology, to make available new opportunities for people with disabilities, and to encourage development of technologies that will help achieve these goals. The law applies to all Federal agencies when they develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology. Under Section 508 (29 U.S.C. ‘ 794d), agencies must give disabled employees and members of the public access to information that is comparable to the access available to others. It is recommended that you review the laws and regulations listed below to further your understanding about Section 508 and how you can support implementation.

[southplatte]

Originally Posted by weslinda

If you have 47,900 IBL that www.espn.com has, then you can get by with screwing a few things up.

That is all too true of statement. Many times these large sites that have so many errors, poor code are written from a complex back end that it is hard to comprehend what actually goes into creating the site and having it be 100% proper valid code. The large market, traffic, links and shear strength of the brand I feel factors into the search engine rankings as much as good code and content does sometimes.

Originally Posted by marketing-helpersdotcom

By the way, Section 508 on applies to federal agencies, not the private sector.

While I do not doubt the intent of the purpose of Section 508, you must take into consideration the lawsuit against Target.com for not being accessible. It is a mere matter of time that it will be held mandatory (or something very similar) for the private sector as well. why not, if the tools, standards and practices exist, employ them now instead of needing to re-code/re-write an entire site to meet these needs of the consumer base that is more and more comprised of different individuals needing different tools, presentations and access?

Not to be off topic on that.

Back to the discussion: IBLs can help generate search rankings, but the spider must be able to read the entire page of content and if there is something that is hindering this, then it is not good.

Has anyone suggested the use of the Google web master tools to see exactly how and what the spiders are seeing on the web site? Might be a good set of tools to use to see from Google what is going wrong, though it may not be the definitive answer needed.

[activeco]

Originally Posted by SemAdvance

Design styling will have no effect on search rankings.

I wouldn't discard views that this could mean a major change.
I have checked the two provided links (old & new) through lynx and besides errors on the new one, the two look as completely different pages.
Besides, the content in the browser IS different. You didn't change the coding only, you changed the content too, with a pretty high ratio (from a robot's view).
This doesn't mean you'll not come back in SERPs soon.
You should have done it just more carefully; coding first and then eventually content.

[Seopro]

In 2000 the Olympics was sued by a blind man and he won. There is a lawsuit against Target Stores filed by the National Federation of the Blind. I didn't mean to get anyone upset over the ADA but it is illegal to discriminate against anyone. Even if there was only one blind person in the world designing for him or her would only be the right thing to do.
Don
Seopro

[Seopro]

Oh and while I am at it section 508 was part of a bill from congress that was passed in 1973 and the DoD did not put it into their directories until 2001. In 1998 all they did was reaffirm the law and that was the wage and rehab committee of congress. It is still against the law to discriminate no matter when it went into effect.
seopro

[mattk@nexsens.com]

Originally Posted by ran_dizolph

@ seopro

google failed validation

as much as i agree that building validating websites is important, i don't agree with your theory that it has much to do with page rank.

Wow. Their main page has 66 errors http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...www.google.com

[Seopro]

I think we are all learning something from this discussion and there will always be 2 sides. I dont think PR has anything to do with how google places sites on a page but that is my opinion. I am baseing my opinion on valid code and designing for the handicaped because it is the right thing to do and also the biggest system of blind readers are the search engines. Now that one statement you can't argue with the rest we will have no way of knowing but we will always wonder about it. For every example leaning one way a person can produce 10 sites leaning the other way. We all do things different and that is what makes the web so great.
12% of all americians have some degree of a disability and I am a disabled viet nam vet but can still wat and talk and see. I think this discussion actually came into existance with sub-titles on TV and the movies.
Seopro

[janeth]

Originally Posted by Seopro

This took me about 2 minutes to find your problem. Doing your website in CSS is not enough. Go to the W3C and validate your code. You have 36 errors on your front page. Fix those and I bet your rankings will improve
Don
Seopro

If this was the case then someone needs to let Google know that most of the top ranked sites do not have code that validates. The code needs to be clean so the bot can get through it but it does not have to validate. (;

[Seopro]

What I was basically telling him to do was to validate his code so it will clean it up. You are right though very few have valid code but I know that is the way I code and I think you do the same thing. The only difference between us is you use tables and I use pure CSS in a tableless design and usually put my content first. (I looked)

[janeth]

Originally Posted by Seopro

What I was basically telling him to do was to validate his code so it will clean it up. You are right though very few have valid code but I know that is the way I code and I think you do the same thing. The only difference between us is you use tables and I use pure CSS in a tableless design and usually put my content first. (I looked)

I have used both tabeless designs and tables but never saw any ranking difference between the two and most the guys here are better with tables.

The last redesign we lost the CSS. I agree if there is a problem it does not hurt to validate the code and move forward from there.

[Seopro]

I think it would be great to know if it does make a difference but it is one of many pieces of the puzzle that makes up the search engine placement. Is it 1% or 0.1%, I dont know but I wish it was 25%.

[CarolineBogart3]

Originally Posted by ran_dizolph

@ seopro

google failed validation

as much as i agree that building validating websites is important, i don't agree with your theory that it has much to do with page rank.

brilliant.

The css is a red herring. Something else changed.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by CarolineBogart3

brilliant.

The css is a red herring. Something else changed.

The css counts very little towards SEO but the pagerank is the count of the number of links and quality of those links that are pointing to your site.

If the anchor text is being put to the best use it can have major impacts on your ranking.

[Seopro]

It is one big puzzle and everything fits in somewhere we just don't know the size of the pieces.