How important is it to update from a tabular lay-out to a div-layout?

[JarnoNijzing]

Mozzers,

As the title of this question describes I'm am wondering how important it is that your code has to be up to date for SEO and UX use. One of my sites was build in 2007 and updates in 2010 (new images / color) but my code hasn't changed that much over te years so the site still uses tables for lay-out purposes in stead of divs. Now how important is it to update this and how much risk will this have to my current rankings? For most of my main keywords I rank number 1 in Google (NL). I can't afford to lose those rankings but if an outdated code will get me into trouble I might have to update this anyway and then rather do it sooner then later.

Any suggestions on this subject?

regards

Jarno

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Long as the site loads fine in all browsers (and loads fine for googlebot - check GWT fetch & render) then it shouldn't really affect SEO.

Its just good practice to use divs and stylesheets over tables. Tables have their uses but for an entire site layout, there are better solutions.

[KevinBudzynski]

Faster load time and a potentially better ux (specifically on mobile) caused by switching to div's is definitely a plus. The content sounds like it will remain the same, so I would not expect to see much or any organic fluctuations. IMHO, I would do it sooner than later.

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Faster load time is questionable - its only faster cause it take less code to load but it would take a looooot to switching from table to div in order to see a significant difference in load time. Removing any image would probably save more load time.

UX-wise... you should test your website in several browsers and devices, in addition to fetching/rendering as google. If everything looks good and is easy to navigate, wouldn't worry about it.

With that in mind, especially since you wouldn't expect to see organic fluctuations, is it worth investing in recoding a whole website from tables to divs? There are probably many better ways to spend that budget.

I would keep the site in tables until you are ready for a website redesign.. at which point you should make sure it uses divs.

[JarnoNijzing]

Thank you both for your responses and my apologies that I haven't been able to respond sooner.

I will start by looking into it a bit more before making any significant changes however maybe 2015 is a nice year for a complete site redesign. Thank you for you thoughts.

Regards

Jarno