LPs .. Tables -or- DIVs

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elyk_L

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Feb 3, 2009
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www.imakemorethenu.com
When building my LPs ... do spyders respond better to sites build using nested tables -- or DIVs ... I'm figuring that using a more CSS based website where I can use more standard tags (heading tags, paragraph tags, etc etc) and defining the styles (color, font family, style etc) in a stylesheet.

Basically what I'm trying to figure out is when doing my LPs will doing one or the other help or hurt my QS for Adwords
 


DIVs should be used for the sites main layout, navigation, etc. Tables are fine to use for body content. Make sure its valid code (both css and html) and make sure its cross-browser compatible.
 
In terms of LP design, I would actually be partial to tables for one reason - Browser compatibility. If you're using pretty basic CSS, and testing the LP with Check Browser Compatibility, Cross Platform Browser Test - Browsershots before you launch, divs and CSS should be fine. If you're lazy, just go with tables. If I slice something directly out of Photoshop, the LP will stay with tables - If I do something from scratch, it's DIVs and CSS. I doubt there's any QS difference.
 
johu said:
If I do something from scratch, it's DIVs and CSS. I doubt there's any QS difference.
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Tables are out dated .. and are lame. I only use them on form layouts if anything but -- I do no that using DIVs to layout the site rather in nested table inside nested table that it cuts down on loading time, and also cuts down on data that spyders have to read through to get to content, meta, etc.

Plus designing in CSS is much easier to dupe LPs and change color schemes ... my only concern was browser capability like someone mentioned above. From my research and my data Im noticing most of my people are using IE6 .. and as most no IE is always behind with keeping up on web standards.

Thanks all for input.
 
Tables for layouts = Big No No.

xHTML (div, span, etc) + CSS is the way to go because by stricter definition they will appear more closely together than trying to render tables the same accross every browser. Also tables are very inflexible to change when it comes to page layout, and take up more lines of code in the long run.

A client also has a lot easier time split testing with a LP made from xHTML/CSS than he would trying to move things around in a table layout.

Tables are best left to simple tabular data, or in scenarios where div/css is weak, such as email marketing.

And there's very few things worse than trying to fix a 6-level deep nested table for cross browser compatibility issue.
 
PS As far as the SEO ability... divs offer no difference over tables, since both are markups, they're not content as far as the browser can see. The actual text, meta, link names, etc those get counted as content, not the markup language.

But I do know that the easier you make it for a spyder/engine to parse your data, such as using xHTML Strict 1.0 instead of broad HTML 4.0, the better chance that everything gets indexed correctly.
 
I learned how to make a wrapper with css...once you do that you can use it as a template and literally drag and drop shit where you want it using dreamweaver. crazy easy.
 
Tables are for tabular data, not for layout.

CSS is bulletproof once you know its quirks. I can make pretty much any layout work pixel perfect across all browsers, and now have a killer master CSS framework of my own that is made up of all the best bits from all the various open source CSS frameworks out there (960 grid, Tripoli, BlueTrip, Eric Meyer's reset, etc.).

I can have as many columns as I want with the primary content always coming first in the code, then secondary, and so on. The columns stretch all the way to the bottom of the page without using faux columns. It has a sticky footer, and runs to a 18px baseline grid. It's quite simply the bomb. It's taken months to perfect, with much reading and trial and error, testing on every browser, Opera, Safari, IE6 and IE7 and FF, and I am still working on it. However, it is now at a point where I just whip out my base code and start tweaking and can make just about any photoshop design work with it.

Learn CSS and how to write your code from scratch. Don't rely on Photoshop or some visual layout tool like Dreamweaver to do it for you.
 
Fatbat said:
I can have as many columns as I want with the primary content always coming first in the code, then secondary, and so on. The columns stretch all the way to the bottom of the page without using faux columns. It has a sticky footer, and runs to a 18px baseline grid. It's quite simply the bomb. It's taken months to perfect, with much reading and trial and error, testing on every browser, Opera, Safari, IE6 and IE7 and FF, and I am still working on it. However, it is now at a point where I just whip out my base code and start tweaking and can make just about any photoshop design work with it.
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Me want.
 
if i knew css better i would use that, but i dont, and im lazy and dont really care, i use tables, and everything i do is seo, so it makes no difference in seo at all.
 
larrybn said:
Me want.
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Here's some places to get started on building your own CSS code base...

Tripoli - a CSS standard for HTML rendering | DevKick Lab << Tripoli covers off probably 80% of the features described, even columns, primary content first, a very eye opening way of rendering column layouts that completely changed the way I looked at doing CSS... I then adapted the sticky footer called Footer Stick Alt from here...

The Man in Blue > footerStickAlt: A more robust method of positioning a footer

I took out the reset code that comes built into Tripoli and inserted Eric Meyers' reset...

CSS Tools: Reset CSS

I took bits from this guy's type rendering engine...

Typogridphy — A Typographical and Grid Layout CSS Framework From Harry Roberts of CSS Wizardry

You could also look at this site for some insight on grid layout...

960 Grid System

There's also the blueprint CSS rendering framework that is popular, but I haven't tried it myself...

Blueprint: A CSS Framework | Spend your time innovating, not replicating

and then BlueTrip which is supposed to be the best bits out of Blueprint and Tripoli as well as several others combined into one...

BlueTrip CSS Framework :: Home Page << this is really quite nice.

There ya have it. All the source material for the most part to build your own uber CSS library.
 
In regards to the engines, a tableless layout is better, as it's easier/faster for them to scan. Someone mentioned tables are outdated, which isn't actually the case. They are just not meant for site structure, they are meant for tabular data.

Having said that, if your site is not ultra cluttered, it doesn't really matter much. But you might as well use CSS, as it's way cleaner
 
Goodcat said:
In regards to the engines, a tableless layout is better, as it's easier/faster for them to scan. Someone mentioned tables are outdated, which isn't actually the case. They are just not meant for site structure, they are meant for tabular data.

Having said that, if your site is not ultra cluttered, it doesn't really matter much. But you might as well use CSS, as it's way cleaner
Click to expand...

Yeah, what he said. CSS based design works so well because it only needs to be scanned and rendered once by a browser, and then the browser caches the CSS so those parts don't have to be rendered again. You can hop from page to page, and those parts that are cached never disappear to be drawn again.

Whereas a layout based on a table need to be scanned twice by a browser before it is rendered, once to dermine the structure, the second to determine the content. Each page needs to be rerendered when it is loaded.

Spiders have a much easier time getting through a CSS based site and I suspect it does make a difference, albiet a small one, to your search results.
 
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