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Re: Everything in tables...what is the effect? From Nicholas on 25 Nov '99 replying to Everything in tables...what is the effect? posted by Lisa >I have read several places that tables can cause problems because they push your keywords in your main paragraph down. For example, if the site design had a two column table with navigation bars on the left and the main paragraph on the right, the search engines would read the table starting with the left column. This would cause your main paragraph to appear as a second, less important paragraph. What if your entire page was formed in tables? Is this going to cause a problem with submitting to search engines? Thanks. Don't know how it affects rankings directly, but it's certainly a nuisance with the SEs that don't read description tags, as ever one of your pages will show the same menu words in the description area. The following table structure puts the body text first, to the robot's eyes: TR TD [empty] /TD TD [body text] /TD /TR TR TD [sidebar menu] /TD TR TD [empty] /TD /TR /TD /TR Course you can also make the menu bar out of graphic links, which the bots should skip over.

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>>I have read several places that tables can cause problems because they push your keywords in your main paragraph down. For example, if the site design had a two column table with navigation bars on the left and the main paragraph on the right, the search engines would read the table starting with the left column. This would cause your main paragraph to appear as a second, less important paragraph. What if your entire page was formed in tables? Is this going to cause a problem with submitting to search engines? Thanks. > >Don't know how it affects rankings directly, but it's certainly a >nuisance with the SEs that don't read description tags, >as ever one of your pages will show the same menu words >in the description area. The following table structure >puts the body text first, to the robot's eyes: > >TR >TD >[empty] >/TD > >TD >[body text] >/TD >/TR > >TR >TD >[sidebar menu] >/TD > >TR >TD >[empty] >/TD >/TR > >/TD >/TR > >Course you can also make the menu bar out of graphic links, >which the bots should skip over.