Why Google Loves CSS

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a code that compliments XHTML by adding style rules to elements on page. Among other things people use it to declare font family, size and color. CSS also let you specify layout and spacing of elements. CSS is best practice when you wish to “Separate Content from Presentation”.


After we explained what is CSS we can now see the advantages of using CSS in your markup and even why Google loves CSS:


With CSS file size shrinks

When using CSS you automatically decrease the file size due to elimination of unnecessary <tags>. It’s simple. If you’ll take out code of the page, you’ll get a smaller file size. This ensures faster page load, and Google prefers pages with a smaller file size then pages that take forever to load. Although there is no specific file size published by Google or other organization, a page size up to a 100KB is a good thing to strive for.


With CSS controlling layout is easier

CSS allows you to design standard compliant websites without hampering look and feel. Even though most designers do not like to follow standards, because of the myth that standard based sites/designs looks bad or limited by rules, there are some that will. Those brave ones that do follow standards guidelines can design attractive websites in no time while maintaining a well structured code. Google pays attention to well structured code.


CSS can hide content in specific situations

CSS lets you hide portions of content in specific situations. Let’s take an example why this is crucial sometimes. If you have content on your document that only available to print and appears only in that specific form of media, and the rest of that document’s content is shown only on screen media type and do not appear on print. Google can still index all of the document’s content no matter what media type it is, and the presentation of your document is not compromised.


Although CSS is a web standard practice, you should keep in mind that not all browsers translate CSS declarations the same way. And there are even some browsers that do not understand CSS at all. Being able to master the CSS art is a long and winding journey that probably can never come to end.


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