Will google penalize a website for using a table layout?
-
I just got a new client today and his entire website layout and structure is using tables instead of divs.
This client is on a tight budget and wants to avoid unnecessary hours for re-coding the website, but at the same time he wants me to improve his SEO organically. This is the first time I've been asked to do work on an existing website that uses pure tables for the entire layout and I'm wondering if this effects the SEO in any way. So my question is, will tables effect rankings and SEO in any way?
-
Great answer. Also, tables are harder to fix later.. the smaller the page, the less your page "weights" - I think right now you should work on fixing architecture, and the rest of the on page stuff. I'm thinking recoding his site to use divs wouldn't have an immediate impact on user engagement. Time spent best, somewhere else. ( Maybe working on errors in WMT )
-
Sounds like something built in early 2000s. Tables won't hurt your SEO directly but it will have a negative impact on pagespeed/load and content optimization. Tables use a lot of extra code that makes it sluggish. I generally always recommend a re-program into DIV/CSS. It's faster, optimized, you will see an SEO benefit.
If your client really doesn't want to do the recode, what I would do is setup all the tags, clean the menu, add any rich snippets that apply, then let them know that's the farthest they'll be able to go without upgrading into DIV/CSS.
-
Hey Scott,
Using tables for a website layout will not affect your rankings directly (aka Google will not give you a penalty for using tables).
However, since tables should be used to present tabular data and not full website layouts, there are certain disadvantages that you should be aware of, and they're very nicely summed up in this post: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/6036/why-arent-we-supposed-to-use-table-in-a-design/6037#6037
Hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google tag manager on blocked beta site - will it phone home to Google and cause site to get indexed?
We want to develop a beta site, in a directory with the robots.txt blocking bots. We want to include the Google Tag Manager tags and event layer tracking code on this beta site. My question is that by including the Google Tag Manager code, that phones home to Google, will it cause Google to index this beta site when we don't want it indexed?
Web Design | | CFSSEO0 -
Does Google take email server IP blacklists into account?
This is just a hypothetical, but would Google use information from email server blacklists to determine the quality of a website? The reason is that we're planning to code in an e-mail queuing system for our next CMS, and we would put SPF and DKIM in place. We wouldn't be sending any bulk e-mails (we use Constant Contact for this), but we might be sending personalised follow up e-mails, unpaid order emails and that sort of thing. There's no reason to think we'll be blacklisted, but from experience I know that these email blacklist directories quite often give false positives when an e-mail server is incorrectly configured. So the risk is that we might get blacklisted by mistake when we start using this new feature. Would Google take this into account as part of the algorithm? And if so, would the damage be permanent? (I.e. does getting removed from the blacklist mean Google will stop thinking we're a low quality / spammy site)
Web Design | | OptiBacUK0 -
Getting ranked on google
I help run a small real estate site in ireland www.aplacetorent.ie and Im in charge of seo. I have read lots of books over the last year or so and while they offer lots of advice some of them dont actually show you what to do. I have joined distilled and I think its the best thing i have done in the last few weeks and am learning a lot but if anyone has any advice i would be very grateful. Thank you
Web Design | | Kessie0 -
Hom much does getting a mobile website improve the "mobile ranking"?
There's been speculation about Google totally not ranking sites that are not mobile, but as far as I can see many sites rank THE SAME on mobile devices as on regular stationary PCs/lap-tops. I had hoped for a radically improved ranking once a mobile site was built. Or is it just that it takes a TON of time for it to go through and then it gets better or is it like with regular sites that a new mobile site on a sub-domain is parked in some form of mobile-sand-box? Also, does putting a mobile site on a ranking domain, as subdomain help, e.g. m.testingsite.com instead of testingsite.mobi ? Thanks.
Web Design | | yvonneq0 -
Where should I spend Money on my website?
My website is www.capitolshine.com what do you think? Where should I spend money to enhance SEO search results? I do have a limited budget but the company is growing quickly and I might have more funds to invest in a few months. Where should I spend money now (less than $500 per month) and where should I spend money in the future? I am afraid the person who coded my website wasn't well versed on SEO. There also might be coding errors. I'm trying to work through the errors myself via the repots from SEOmoz.
Web Design | | CapitolShine0 -
Google penalty for links opening in new tab?
Our web services provided suggested that Google doesn't like in-text links that open the link in a new tab. Can anyone verify this? We often link to outside credible resources for our audience, though it seems smarter to open in a new tab rather than risk that the person will not navigate back to our site after finding us. Thank you in advance!
Web Design | | jhamlin0 -
I need to buy a website template - anyone knows a good place to buy it? where you should buy one template?
I used the www.templatemonster.com or http://themeforest.net/, but is difficult to find a template with a focus on SEO. Also with the necessity to include text in the beginning of the website, is difficulty to found something really good.
Web Design | | Naghirniac0 -
Site-wide footer links or single "website credits" page?
I see that you have already answered this question before back in 2007 (http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/2163), but wanted to ask your current opinion on the same question: Should I add a site-wide footer link to my client websites pointing to my website, or should I create a "website credits" page on my clients site, add this to the footer and then link from within this page out to my website?
Web Design | | eseyo0