I've created a site that I am very pleased with full XHTML/CSS vailidates on every page looks good - blah blah.

The client has now commissioned a SEO company and they have basically turned round and said that all of my code needs to be changed in order to optimise it.

I am pretty upset by this and really can't believe this is the case. How can this be right.

The sample page I just looked at (not live as yet) is all tables/nested tables with inline styling, etc, etc.

How can semantically correct code be worse then tables everywhere.

I have tried to contact the SEO company but they don't return me calls.

The client is now questioning my abilities as a Web Developer because the SEO have to alter everything. I would like to find out more about the use of SEO with XHTML/CSS so that I can at least understand why this is happening.

Thanks

Hmm. My approach to design is to have good content. Search engines index the actual words on the page. That is probably the most important thing.

Next up, I make sure the pages consist of headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, and forms. All the CSS and JS is in external files. The styles are applied to the semantic markup. I only use a class for some content if the style for that block is different to the rest of the page.

The pages have a DOCTYPE, declare the character encoding, and the content language. The code is run through the HTML and the CSS validator and all errors corrected.

Next up, the content of the title tag is optimised, as is the meta description. I usually write a short meta keywords tag, too, as Yahoo is rumoured to read it.

Inline styles are code bloat, in the same way that font tags are.

It sounds like you know what you are doing; and some cowboy operator with smooth sales talk has got someone's ear. Best of luck.

g1smd - thanks for the response, you have just described the exact way that I work right down to making the page semantically correct.

It seems the general consensus is that the SEO company is reworking the site to a structure (tables + inline code) as this is what they are happy working with. The unfortunate thing is if they had talked to me I would have happily pointed them in the right direction with any questions they have about XHTML/CSS.

It sounds as if the SEO company wants places to "stuff" keywords. We SEO and prefer to work with XHTML/CSS sites over anything else.

Your client should be questioning the abilites of the SEO company NOT yours.

Here's the skinny on CSS and SEO. First off, XHTML is fine. There is no downside whatsoever. CSS is a slightly different matter.

CSS on its own is not bad. But Google infers importance of words based on the elements that contain them. That's why H1's and H2's are influential. Bold tags are also potentially influential. When using CSS, it is possible to remove all the meaning imparted to text by using such tags as span. If you accomplish styling by using span tags with a class or style attribute that makes it bold, it is not as clear to Google that it the text is special at all. But if you used an old-fashioned bold tag, Google would know.

The general rule that I give out is format everything with bare bones HTML tags first. Use headline tags for headlines, bold tags for bold. Then ADD the CSS to start reigning the look under control. That way, you get the best of both worlds.

So, CSS in and of itself is not bad. It's that you can do a lot of stylizing without leaving the old HTML element clues that Google holds so dear.

If your page uses CSS to build on the basic HTML elements, then you're golden. A few Google searches on related topics and viewing source on those pages with the client should prove your point.

The code I create is semantically correct so therefore <h1> through <h6> is used where appropriate, spans are keep to a mimimum as I tend to style within id's so it may be #leftcolum h1 but code wise it would still be <h1>Heading</h1>

The bare bones is where I start - and from there style.

Does google recognise <strong> or <em>?

Does google recognise <strong> or <em>?

both. doesn't matter.

I agree with Mike above... CSS is great but you don't want to take out ALL your styling. bolds and heading tags need to be used on the page, just use CSS to make the headings the size and font you want, etc.

All good - thanks

I have preached this mantra for quite a while now:

Make your document out of headings, paragraphs, lists, tables and forms. A heading sits above, and introduces, each of the other blocks of content.

Check your document using the "outline" function at http://validator.w3.org/detailed.html, by ticking the box for "show outline". On the results page, inspect the section marked "outline". If the indented bullet-pointed list does not look like a summary of your document then you are abusing the heading tags.

Use CSS to style the basic building blocks. The basic page elements can be styled directly without using classes or IDs. If one block has a different style to the rest of the blocks of that same type then, and only then, apply a class for that block only.

There is little need for div or span. Those usually end up as massive code bloat, and hide the semantics.

(Read this in conjuction with my other posting, above)

I think we are in agreement here - when I say that I use div id's it is for page design - ie a wrapper for the page that positions and styles the page design - a main-content that maybe adds left / right margins and a backround image.

all headers, parargraphs, lists, etc are styled as elements, ie

h1 {colour: red;}
p {font-size: 100%}
ul {border: 1px solid #FFF}

When you are saying "there is little need for div or span I take it you are refering to within the header, paragraph elements - correct? Without the use of any div id's in the page to strucutre the page or maybe add background images etc the page will look considerably dull.

Thanks for the "show outline" tip never used that before, very handy...

[ Message was edited by: pixelpyro 03/13/2005 08:22 am ]

From a management perspective, ideally everything should work together to achieve the marketing goals.

Developing a viable eletronic storefront is a huge task. Each section department really should be flexible to make it all work to succeed.

The project manager must be the final arbitrator when sections are in conflict. Giving the project manager options to make informed decisions is critical.

SEO is just a function of marketing. If an SEO company wants carte-blance to rewrite evertyhing, that is not realistic.

Many times I've asked the project manager, "This is a vital change to ensure marketing success. Ask your designers how it can be most easily implemented."

More times that not the experienced designer has a quick and easy solution.

Communication by all departments is paramount. Re-writing the established businees model just for SEO is missing the whole point.

SEO should just be an enhancement. The more experience the SEO has, the more options they can deliver to the decision maker.

An SEO firm that says, "This is the only way we can make it work", shows no imagination or creativity.

Goal Number 1 for an SEO firm should be, "How Can I help your make more money?



[ Message was edited by: yellowwing 03/13/2005 11:48 am ]

Quite frankly this site does not look optimised at all. For instance the page title is very important for SEO and they seem to use a lot of one word titles eg Throws, Mirrors, Tables etc. The pages I looked at all had the same description...

Another clue is the <meta name="revisit-after" content="5 Days"> - In their dreams!

Unless they have used landing pages that are not immediately obvious - it doesn't look optimised at all.

Or maybe they have control of a few thousand inbound links for you...

I have been recently trying to find out why my valid XHTML and CSS site needed to be completely re written by a SE company in order to achieve good results.

The site was never written with SEO as a key aspect so I can understand the need to change page titles and content but the whole website has been re created using tables and inline code.

I accept that some of the things I have done– ( my initial h1 that has some text that is hidden from the browser and used for a printing a header to each page may well be an issue) I fail to see such a radical approach is needed – please remember that my knowledge of SEO is slim and something that I am know looking to address hence…

The SE company has finally put their site online and taken mine off – I would very much appreciate any feedback as to how (or how not) there pages are better then mine and will achieve better results.

Here is the new SEO friendly site:

New improved site - please note the dot is written as I don’t really want to log referrers. Thanks.

www(dot)stanzeinteriors(dot)com

And here is a copy of mine hosted on my server.
www.copious.co.uk/stanze/fullsite/

I should point out that at the time of writing this the “new improved site” doesn’t work very well in FireFox or Safari – haven’t check Opera or Moz but a good chance they display the site broken also.

Please be as descriptive as possible as it is my intention to give the client this thread as a “heads up” . I am not here to name and shame just want to get to the bottom of this once and for all.

Thank you for your time.

(added)
What about code comparison with the original XHTML/CSS site that i created - how is the new site better?

[ Message was edited by: bhartzer 03/22/2005 02:00 pm ]

You're better off waiting for Mike Levin or one of the other techie guys for that - I'm just an SEOer.

Please Add the URL to your profile....

Thanks bhartzer - that makes sense now.

Have looked in more depth at this now and still say the site is not optimised - they should get their money back!

> Bold tags are also potentially influential. When using CSS, it is possible to remove all the meaning imparted to text by using such tags as span. If you accomplish styling by using span tags with a class or style attribute that makes it bold, it is not as clear to Google that it the text is special at all. But if you used an old-fashioned bold tag, Google would know.

This is just flat out incorrect. The bold tag is a _visual_ attribute and has zero semantic meaning. Just because a word is bolded does make it more important, because people bord words in their navigation or links or whatever and it does not make them more important in the structure of the text. The CORRECT way to emphasize words for Google et al is to use semantic tags <em> and <strong>. They have meaning in terms of importance, and search engines understand this. How they look visually (italic and bold, respectively) can be easily changed in CSS.

Presentational markup such as <b> and <i> are depreciated for a reason -- they mean nothing except a VISUAL cue.

First off, great job on your part! After reviewing both sites looks like your client has been had by a slick talking WILLY.

No text edits made
No titles or discriptions optimized
Full of bloated code
Useless metas added robot revisit etc.

This last is I guess what this company calls optimization - putting metas in and thats it.

Maybe you can get a face to face with your client, compare the two, point out the lack of SEO and that the site was just reformated into tabels etc. Text and Titles are all the same!

That your design CSS is easier for SE to get to the text because it is closer to the top of the page, the Engines don't have to troll through bloated code, and that METAs the ones utilized by SE's is just the Title, discription and in a few instances the keywords.

Best yet, when you do get a meeting, come armed with a few Optimization articles relaited to the points you will be making:
Example
external style sheets vs. inline (same for java)
Effective discriptions and title tags

In closing, we have all experienced the bottom feeder I'm a Seo type, Know that you did do a great job on clean design & codeing and if I was the SEO your site would have made life easy to be sucessful.

Take a copy of this thread with you too!

They have been done; wasted their money. The people who did that work are clueless in the extreme.

The SEO company like many I've encountered have no idea what they are saying.

The use of too many embbeded tables from my experience may actually hurt the ranking.

From personal experience across many different client sites, converting their site to valid XHML actually signficantly improves ranking even when content hasn't been rewritten. Of course using XHML you start using h1 and h2 tags, and position content in oder of improtance.

For more info, please read
The Dollars and Sense of Building to Standards
[link]
and
SEO and Your Web Site
[link]

Both articles reference the benefit of Standards and the impact on SEO

This may be some ammunition for you to use with your client.

Hi Guys thanks for all the comments.

I have been in contact with the client and explained the situation and feedback/response from this thread and have been advised that the SEO company is still in the early stages of optimisation and that is why several of the points have mentioned don't seem to have been done (page titles, headers, etc)

I was finally given contact details for the SEO company yesterday and zipped them off an email outlining my concerns.

In reference to my concerns about why the site was changed from XHTML / CSS the response was that there are "questions (problems) that the pages are not indexed by Google. It is very easy to make a mistake in the code of XHTML/CSS pages so that Google will treat this as a spam and/or will be banned and/or not indexed"

It was also stated that "In our opinion the coding is not in the first priority in the web promotion and of course we have our own “no-how” methods which will be used on (the site).

My main concern has always been the need of the SEO campany to completely redevelop the site due to XHTML/CSS not being "search engine friendly" and so it can be integrated into a CMS. Of course this raised several issue for me in that I only create sites that are XHTML/CSS and as such am effectively shooting myself in the foot when it comes to optimisation.

Obviously the only way we can really see how effective this approach will be is to give it time and assess the results. I have no idea how long that would be but......

>> It is very easy to make a mistake in the code of XHTML/CSS pages so that Google will treat this as a spam and/or will be banned and/or not indexed" <<

Err, that is complete rubbish. Any code (XHTML/HTML) that is badly malformed could end up not being spidered. However, your code was validated XHTML so that doesn't apply. For really badly formed code, it might not be spidered, but it would never be banned. These idiots use FUD as their main marketing strategy by the look of it.


>> advised that the SEO company is still in the early stages of optimisation and that is why several of the points have mentioned don't seem to have been done.. <<

Why the hell would they upload unfinished work to a production server? In most companies you could be fired for doing that. The new site should be developed and tested completely offline on a development server, or online in a development sub-domain that is blocked to all search engine spiders.


>> in our opinion the coding is not in the first priority in the web promotion and of course we have our own “no-how” methods which will be used <<

That's an opinion, not a fact. There they go with that FUD stuff again. They say that they have "no-how". Yes I'd agree with that. It seems like you have the "know-how" and they don't.

An (X)HTML document built from headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, and forms, with clear semantic structure, validated code, and external CSS and JS, will win out in Google simply because the spider has less work to do to find the content, the importance/structure of the content is defined, and with no errors in the code the bot is going to be able to make a straight pass through the page to index the lot in one easy move.

You're right. They're wrong. They sound like bodgers.

Thanks g1smd - having read all the replies it has certainly given me the incentive to find out more and apply it to my websites safe in the knowledge that I am working from a solid foundation.

I am just helping someone convert a site now. Their code has a section where there is a span inside a div inside a div inside a div. There is text at every level of the heirarchy, and some pages are styled using CSS classes on the divs and the span, whilst others have tons of inline font tags inside this mess.

The new code has a <h3>...</h3> heading, followed by a <p>...</p> paragraph, followed by a paragraph with a class name <p class="sig">...</p>. The amount of HTML code on the page is reduced by about 80%. The content now has a logical and semantic structure. The bot has less work to do. The page loads slightly faster. The page looks exactly the same in the browser! I know it will rank higher in a few days time - no idea why; but I have seen it happen several times before.

I am curious as to how your client XHTML pages parse out in the Lynx Viewer.

If it looks okay, you can optimize it without wrecking the code, (assuming this Lynx Viewer can render the code).

pixelpyro, this could be an opportunity. Learning how to how to get rankings with XHTML could be profitable.

I don't know the first thing about XHTML. I just look at a client site and make recommendations on content and keyword placement and prominence. Their developers implement it. If it doesn't look right, or can't be done, we come up with an alternative that can be done.

Why the hell would they upload unfinished work to a production server? In most companies you could be fired for doing that. The new site should be developed and tested completely offline on a development server, or online in a development sub-domain that is blocked to all search engine spiders.

My sentiments exactly. This whole thing sounds like a company trying to play at being SEO with no knowledge of coding.

Unfortunately this is becoming more and more of an issue. We see it many times, we arrive at a website to troubleshoot why it's not working too well in search engines when the site owner has had it looked at by an SEO company.

We usually find these issues and not in no particular order:

Code has been tampered with and a mix of inline styles and CSS has caused the site to no,longer validate.

Spammy keywords

no logical layout

too many tables been added making it useless for a spider to reach the content

misuse of titles (or rather not structured properly)

Link flow (usually worthless inbound links from the same IP block or c-class)

url addressing (usually not knowing when to use a hyphen or underscore to emphasis a product page)

The list is endless. A lot of these people who are jumping onto the SEO bandwagon because they have done a bit of reading do not realise that optimising comes in knowing how to code or working with a person who does know how to code right. The taking into account structure bad how it will be read by a spider.
Then moving onto SEM to implement it live and work it through the search
engines,
The list is endless. In this case it sounds like a company trying their luck. Did anyone check to see how they ranked in the search engines themselves?

I just got to this thread for a link at Search Engine Watch.

I honestly hope you can convince the client that they have been taken for a ride by this SEO company.

Explain to them that by using semantic code and CSS, their site can be easily modified whenever they want. By the SEO company reverting back to a table based layout, essentially what they have done is made it so if the client wants to update any look/feel items of the site, they can bill more hours for it.

You might want to show the client CSS Zen Garden, as an explanation of how the semantic XHTML CODE you have created will never need to be changed to update the look and feel of the site. Explain to them that that way, any SEO that is done to the content never even needs to be touched! All design elements are in the CSS.

And most of all! Firmly suggest that they contact another SEO company to get another opinion - I am sure if you find another reputable company, they will back up that your code is certainly better than what this SEO company has done to it.....why is an SEO company messing w/ the code anyway, unless SEO is not their main priority, development is?