Updated: August 16, 2009
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If Google Ignores You... Try CSS
CSS is an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) power tool that can dramatically boost your search engine rankings. This article explains how — no programming knowledge required. Promise!
CSS improves search engine results. In plain English, this article explains why.
SEO
Whether you are planning to develop a web site or you already own one, you undoubtedly will want your site to appear prominently in search engine results. As you probably know, efforts to improve organic search engine rankings are called search engine optimization or SEO. This article explains one of the key components of an ethical, professional search engine optimization strategy called cascading style sheets or CSS.
Behind The Scenes
Even if you have no interest in web site programming, it is helpful to understand just a bit of what happens behind the scenes, so let's begin with a quick and simple explanation.
Web Page Components
Most web pages contain a combination of text and images. Some guidance is required to instruct your web browser where, on the page, the text and images should appear, which is done with programming. In essence, these are the three primary components of a web page, text, images and programming instructions.
What Do Search Engines Do?
Search engine companies, such as Google, have automated computers that crawl around the Web looking for web pages to add to their enormous list. Each time these robot computers stumble upon your web site, they attempt to read the text to determine how to index or categorize your web pages, which means they try to figure out what topics your site discusses and to what degree your site would benefit someone seeking information about each of those topics. If they decide your site is an outstanding resource, your site has satisfied a major requirement to appear prominently in search results for that topic.
What Do Search Engines Appreciate?
What have we established? Your site's placement in a search engine company's results is determined, to a large extent, by how relevant that search engine decides your content is to the search phrase your potential visitor enters when looking for a web site like yours.
Exactly how each search engine determines which site is more relevant than the next is a closely guarded secret. But a large part of the process is not a secret. Here's what we know.
Search engine crawlers don't read images, so any text contained in an image will not improve your search results. If they can't read it, it isn't relevant.
Search engine crawlers do read plain, non-graphical text. They also read programming instructions, which are written in plain text. This is where CSS comes in. Remember CSS?
CSS Is Search Engine Friendly
When used with expertise, CSS enables your code-capable web designer or front-end web developer, whoever is writing the programming instructions, to remove most of those instructions from your web page files and place them in a separate file. Herein lies the key, the reason you need to know about CSS, even if you could care less about web programming.
How Does CSS Improve Search Results?
To perform well in the search engines, your site must be considered relevant for whatever phrase your potential customer or target visitor enters in the search box. If you sell purple plastic frogs, you will want high search rankings for the phrase, purple plastic frogs. You'll probably also want to rank well for purple frogs, plastic frogs, and maybe purple plastic reptiles. You get the idea...
Okay, so how does this impact my overall marketing objective and lifelong dream to dominate the purple plastic frog market? How does CSS help my web site climb to the top of the search results for my keyword phrases?
By eliminating the clutter.
It is that simple. CSS allows your code-capable web designer or front-end web developer to place most of the programming instructions in a separate file. So, when Google comes a crawlin', most of what they read and index is keyword-rich text, not computer instructions.
The result? Your site leapfrogs ahead of the competition, whose sites are still woven together with traditional, old-school, table-based instructions, which collectively dilute their keywords, causing their site to appear less relevant.
It's true. By moving the presentation-related programming instructions to a separate file, a CSS file, your content jumps to center stage, and your site hops over one of the tallest hurdles on the path to Google Page One search results.
CSS Bonus Benefits
Improved search engine ranking is sufficient to make converting to CSS a cost effective investment. But, there's more. Your pages will load faster. Your site will be easier to maintain. Your layout (design) will be easier to modify. And, your site will be available to a wider range of visitors because it will be accessible on alternative devices.
The layout and design variations achievable with CSS are virtually limitless.
Visit "CSS Zen Garden" (external link) for examples of CSS flexibility to restyle identical content...
CSS Bottom Line
For those of you who are bottom line, business types, here's the bottom line. If your company or organization is planning to develop a new web site, be sure it is coded with CSS. If you already own a site and want to improve your search results, convert your table-based programming to CSS.
