How to use Cascading Style Sheets (css)?

Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS for short, are another great way to help create top search engine rankings. Did you know that many search engines compare the amount of code/HTML that you have on your pages to the amount of viewable content? Viewable content is commonly regarded as the text that you can actually see and read on the page.

It is best to do away with as much code as possible. In addition, WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors really like to slap the code on thick, which can reduce your chances for top search engine results. For this reason, it is also best to hand code your pages.

In regard to Search Engine Optimization, one of the biggest benefits of  CSS is that it allows you to remove font tags from your HTML code.

For example, many web sites have tags such as these:

<font face="verdana" size="2" color="#000000">...blah, blah, blah...</font>

Numerous font tags quickly add up to quite a mess, and there is no need for them. ALL content text can be controlled via CSS. Instead of using the traditional code, try putting this into the head of your template:

<style type="text/css"> td {font-family:verdana; font-size:10pt;} </style>

Or even better make an external Link to a css style sheet like:

<link href="HTTP://www.yourdomain/path/yourcss.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

The above CSS will make sure that everything in a <td> will be at 10pt, and you will never have to worry about font tags again. However, it is not likely that you will only ever want to use that one font size/style. You will also need Headings, sub headings and footer texts. You may want to change the color of your links and the color they go when you hover over them with your mouse.

Before you spend any time installing the above methods, take the time to learn about CSS. Knowing how to create style sheets and implement then into your web site reduces  the need for manual font tags and other unnecessary code within your web pages.

The use of css saves Download time because, although you have an extra page, search engine spiders don't need to search numerous repetitive tags.

External JavaScript’s should be kept outside the scope of search robots. The same is not true for the external CSS style sheet. Because webmasters can cheat with css styles like ‘invisible’ styles or ‘same color as background’ styles, the global opinion between SEO experts is that search engine spiders should have access to external style sheets.