I can’t seem to get a straight answer when it comes to how a site is coded/built and the affects that this has on SEO. After having taken a few web courses (design to SEO related courses) it seems to me that the “best practice” with regard to building a site that is search engine “friendly” is with CSS, utilizing as few tables as possible. I’ve been told by numerous instructors that tables can adversely affect SEO rankings and they don’t recommend constructing with tables (they consider this an outdated approach).
However, I work with a couple of web developers that swear this isn’t true and refuse to move away from building sites with tables. Can you solve this mystery for me once and for all? And, if CSS is the way to go, should I go to the expense of having sites developed with tables converted to CSS in order to improve SEO??