Is table-less worthless?

[janeth]

believe as you like but it's a fact...

No offense intended but I get an email a minute claiming something or another. I kind of like to test things a bit on my own.

I've been optimizing websites for over 7 years now. Updating the code, making it valid and more accessible has always benefited it's rank and position in the search engines. I've done work for AT&T, Governments of BC, ON, US, CANADA, School Boards, Charitable sites, and numerous corporate websites over the years. I've had the pleasure of working along some of the greatest renowned SEOs and SEMs over the last 8 years, the benefits are real, the logic works.

AT&T does not have valid code but I am sure you have your reasons.

Google says design your site for the visitor, if you're not building sites that are at least partially accessible then you're alienating a growing portion of your audience. Study the demographics.

I build all my sites for my visitors and have never had any trouble ranking them or them being accessible to my visitors.

I have to ask what do you call optimization if it's not optimizing the code and layout of a site? SEM (marketing) is all the business surrounding submissions, tags, content etc.

I agree with the content but the rest is only good for non-competitive keywords. As long as Google can follow the links and you have good title tags and plenty of incoming links with good anchor text you can rank a site for any keyword you want.

Lastly.. the Google Webmaster Guidelines clearly state that they recommend you create your site for the users.

My users could careless rather I use CSS, tables or if the site validates. I build my sites for the users. As a matter of fact I am one of the few people that make my total living online. No phone book ads, news paper ads or anything else. If they do not come through my site or from another customer they do not find me.

The spirit of that is allowing everyone to be able to access your website. I'm still searching for a few chats with Matt Cutts, and I've read it in his blog also regarding using up to date, valid content, accessibility and how these are the crux of what google is looking for, even if all of these things are not currently addressed in their algorithms and those that are may not carry a lot of weight with SEO, but any weight at all is a help.

Everyone can access my sites but I would rather spend less time trying to show how well my sites validate and how good I am with CSS and more time trying to build a site that will do what my visitor is wanting the site to do.

PS

You may want to get on that AT&T thing

[janeth]

believe as you like but it's a fact...

And it is not a matter of what I believe or do not believe we did some testing on this about a year ago.

We never saw a change in ranking.

[Orion]

No offense intended but I get an email a minute claiming something or another. I kind of like to test things a bit on my own.

Don't we all, lol.. And I agree you should test it out see how well it works.

AT&T does not have valid code but I am sure you have your reasons.

The work we did for them about 4 years ago did... wasn't for att.com either.

I build all my sites for my visitors and have never had any trouble ranking them or them being accessible to my visitors.

Have you actually tried to look at your sites on a cell phone or had someone with a speech browser visit them?

My users could careless rather I use CSS, tables or if the site validates. I build my sites for the users. As a matter of fact I am one of the few people that make my total living online. No phone book ads, news paper ads or anything else. If they do not come through my site or from another customer they do not find me.

Same here, I run a business 11 years now solely online same as you. In fact I support our family of 5 plus a couple other families =) It's all good.

Everyone can access my sites but I would rather spend less time trying to show how well my sites validate and how good I am with CSS and more time trying to build a site that will do what my visitor is wanting the site to do.

Still skeptical on how well everyone can access your sites. I'll let you know when I check them out later tonight. Personally I find it a LOT quicker to create a site with valid code than not. If you know how to do it and you get used to it it's faster. But then whatever you get used to is easier, lol...

[kgun]

When I read such posts, my feeling that I am coming from the future is getting more strong.

And I from another planet, XML.

Valid code: My impression is that the big players do not care much.

Remember time is money and it is 2 early 2 know the future.

[langsor]

Valid code: My impression is that the big players do not care much.

And this is the truth!!!

My friend works remotely for the #1 NY digital ad agency and they pretty much only develop Flash sites targeted for IE on Windows and barely check for Mozilla browser compatibility if they have time (which they never do)...and I don't even want to think if their scripts, et.al are standards compliant, but my money is they're not.

What are they doing? Pumping out "top-end", "cutting-edge" sites for some of the biggest names around the world!

Do they care about validating on W3C? Of course not (maybe a couple of the lower-players do?) because they're making $$$

*KA-CHING*

...okay, I just W3Ced two of their sites, their main site and one client site...neither validated...proof for the puddin'.

[Orion]

I'm talking about consistent top 10 rankings with NO paid listings no PPC strictly organic SEO only. Some code, some content, some tags, top 10... continue developing links and updating content regularly to stay there. That's what we've been doing for the last 10 years with clients and it's always worked.

[Urbanxtremes]

At the end of the day you have to decide which is best for you, I have built over 300 major websites of which the majority have been HTML tables; all cross browser and OS compatible. The SEO factors for them are top-notch. Recently I have started building sites using CSS, which have proved to be an interesting challenge.

The accessibility factor is important for large companies, especially in the UK; as the government have started fining companies that do not at least comply too priority level 3. As usual the accessibility factors are blown out of proportion. The UK figures are such: out of 6.8 million people with disabilities 808 thousand people are benefiting from accessible websites. The 6.8 million is a bit of a lie, as they have included everyone that is: visually impaired (including people that wear glasses of mild prescription.), Hearing Impairment, Mobility or Dexterity Impairment and Learning Disabilities such as dyslexia. Would be nice to include the true figures…
(Source: Isolani / National Statistics / W3C Organisation)

Now, web agencies have played on this accessibility issue and are charging considerably more money to companies; under the cloak of the need of CSS sites for accessibility and SEO. Of course they are going to say you need a CSS site, it means new revenue. The company I work for finished building their site last year, at a healthy tune of 1 million. The development company and ad agency have both said that they now need to rebuild their site using CSS otherwise they will not get anymore SEO and have the possibilities of getting fined. They believed them, so we are embarking on rebuilding the site using CSS at a considerable cost.

Do I agree with these agencies: NO

Our site is table based, hits Priority 3 and receives 130k visitors from Google alone per-week and my table based personal news network site gets 12k from Google every day.

If you are not confident in coding in CSS and learning all the hacks, then stick to standard HTML, following SEO guidelines. However, consider using XML and the style parameters for your sites content, this will see you proud in the long term and when you have time, learn a little CSS...

[janeth]

I'm talking about consistent top 10 rankings with NO paid listings no PPC strictly organic SEO only. Some code, some content, some tags, top 10... continue developing links and updating content regularly to stay there. That's what we've been doing for the last 10 years with clients and it's always worked.

How about a couple keywords?

And why don't we put this to a test?

[janeth]

Now, web agencies have played on this accessibility issue and are charging considerably more money to companies; under the cloak of the need of CSS sites for accessibility and SEO. Of course they are going to say you need a CSS site, it means new revenue. The company I work for finished building their site last year, at a healthy tune of 1 million. The development company and ad agency have both said that they now need to rebuild their site using CSS otherwise they will not get anymore SEO and have the possibilities of getting fined. They believed them, so we are embarking on rebuilding the site using CSS at a considerable cost.

Do I agree with these agencies: NO

It is a tool for web designers to use to make money. If I want my site to be W3C compliant and table free I only have to walk down stairs and tell my guys I need this.

And it will be done in a couple hours. I will do it when they get here to prove how easy it is to do. But my site will not start ranking all of a sudden for any new keywords.

It will not move at all.

[Urbanxtremes]

It is a tool for web designers to use to make money. If I want my site to be W3C compliant and table free I only have to walk down stairs and tell my guys I need this.

And it will be done in a couple hours. I will do it when they get here to prove how easy it is to do. But my site will not start ranking all of a sudden for any new keywords.

It will not move at all.

Then you are lucky that you have a department to go to. A lot of companies have no experience in building sites, and as such believe all the hype that goes around.

Development agencies exaggerate on times, especially when the companies have no idea on time ratios. For example: 11 days effort to build a contact us page at a cost of £7,150 + the technical spec £11k. Funny, this task would only take me about 1 hour effort. No wonder companies are looking to Eastern Europe to get their websites built.

In fact by rebuilding the site in full CSS from being tables will affect the SEO; as all the previous efforts of getting pages linked, will be broken as new page names will replace the old: creating dead-links.