A Match Made in Heaven: CSS SEOCategory: All news, Blog, On-Page Optimization, cascading style sheets, css, seo | |
2 04 2009 |
Believe it or not, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) can make a tremendous difference to your website’s search engine rankings. Simply put, CSS simplifies the code on your website, making it more readable or “indexable” by search engine spiders.
One example of “un-indexable” code is your site’s images. Search engine spiders are pretty smart, however, they are still not smart enough to read the text in your images. With CSS, you can convert your textual images into selectable text while still retaining most of its graphic look. Check the heading and navigation text on your website by doing what I call the “Selectable Test.” Here’s how to put your images against the Selectable Test.
Try selecting the text below with your cursor. Do you notice any difference between the two boxes?
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One of the headings is an image while the other is an actual heading with CSS styling. Even with the proper alt attribute (alt=”search engine spider”), the first, selectable heading receives higher approval by search engine spiders. Why? Search engine spiders have a hard time trusting that what is placed in your alt tags are relevant and not spammed with keywords. Headings are not inherently hidden from web browsers. Therefore, they can receive more trust.
There are oodles of quality on-site optimization techniques such as passing the Selectable Test. Talk to your website developer. If any answers to the following questions are yes, provide the following solution to your website developer:
Solution: Rebuild menus with CSS
Solution: Rebuild the layout with CSS (it is theorized that clean, concise code, capitalizing on indexable content, may positively benefit your search rankings)
Solution: Use script and link tags to reference to JavaScript files and stylesheets.
Solution: Use Google’s swfobject to add proper text.
Solution: Remove hidden text!
I’ve added a thread about CSS and SEO on our Forums. Feel free to tweet me if you’d like me to take a look at your website. You can also post it on the forums and get some advice from our expert forum members.
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