Why You Should Use CSS

It seems more and more webmasters are using CSS for the design and layout of their sites rather than depending on tables and HTML mark up. As well as being more efficient in terms of page size and reusing CSS templates many webmasters believe that it also contributes towards search engine friendliness.

Jacob over at Blogging Pro has written an article based on his personal experiences and points out what he believes to make a better more search engine friendly site.

For a long time I have always loved using tables for site layout, but the general consensus is now that tables are bad for layout. I agree once you start nesting tables things start to get complicated and messy. All of this extra HTML in your page gets in the way of the real content that the search engines are after. If you separate design from content the search engines can just crawl the content and ignore the design.

Separating content from design also means that pages are much easier to update, rather than having to rewrite every page all you need do is alter the stylesheet. This saves you no end of time and saves you no end of bandwidth, the browser only has to pull down the stylesheet once if you use it for all of your pages. Not only have you saved on bandwidth costs but you have speeded up page loading, this is good for both your visitors and the many bots that crawl your site.

I have started to use CSS in more of my sites and I am going to use CSS solely on my next site which means learning about how CSS is used for layout. One of the sites that I have found useful is the Web Design Group where they have a guide to cascading style sheets. The site also includes lots of links to other CSS resources.

If you are not using CSS it would be well worth your time learning the CSS tags and their properties. Think of it as a future investment, the time you spend now will pay for itself in better search engine ranking, saved bandwidth and you will cut down on your maintenance and development time for your new sites.

From the Blog of Allan Burns. Plenty of tips to keep you busy on yuor website.

More Web Design Articles

Using Graphic Design on Your Website
Almost everything is available on the web? products, services, e-books, software, audios, videos, membership sites, or newsletters. Regardless of what you?re promoting, there?s a never-ending supply of prospects and customers on the world-wide-web.

Is a Web Site Builder Right for You?
A web site builder can be a real life saver to someone without advanced HTML knowledge or tools. Web site builders allow a relative newbie to the internet create a professional website in very little time.

Website Design Firm
Website design firms come in all shapes and sizes.When choosing which firm you would like to build your website, there are many factors which you need to take into consideration.

Setting Up a Website
Where does a person start when setting up a website? What software is best to use? Setting up a website is not an easy proposition. If you are interested in knowing what the first step is in setting up your own website, continue reading.

Quality Web Copy is the Key to Success
Many websites make the mistake of being all flash and no substance. Nothing irritates potential customers more than visiting your website hoping to find information and instead seeing only blinding color and flashing borders.

Affordable Web Design In Birmingham
If you have a business, big or small you may be thinking of getting yourself a website.The world wide web is another way of spreading your message or selling your product.

Web Copy - What You Should Know First
Just what is web copy? Some people think that web copy is anything that is written on a web page. But that is "content" and it is decidedly different than web copy.

7 Benefits of HTML Validation
You may not bother with html validation or writing simple and clean code when designing your web site. Later you may find your site is slow loading, appears incorrectly in the main browsers and does not rank well for the major search engines.

Converting Print Advertising For Use On The Web - A How-To
Contrary to the beliefs of some, advertising for web and print are very different. Converting print ads for use on the web is very tricky.

A Landing Page is Not an Order Page (and why it matters)
To explain my point I need to first confuse the issue a bit (you?ll see why): While a landing page is not an order page, it can, and in many cases should, contain the order form.So what is the difference? Is this just a question of semantics? Actually, there is a big difference and it can have a big effect on your conversion rate.