Does CSS Design Affect the Website Effectiveness in term of SEO?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Diana Smith: If I can access the code and make changes, etc. on a Weebly platform website, how is it less valuable SEO wise than say a site built by top web designer-well, aside from obvious, silly. I just mean the ability of my site to become just as high in rankings as code from scratch using code then a pre-built template I alter and max out with appropriate SEO additions. Is there a difference. Need answer for client and self as it's been a theory of mine and so I've been testing different platforms and conducting experiments for small businesses to manage their own site/seo and to handle advertisements. I'd love your perspective, but remember the core question-what if anything is different or would prevent my weebly built seo powered website from being as high in ranking as a similar site and seo built by designer starting from scratch. Thanks!!!!
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  Kenneth Knøss Abueg: There is a huge difference. If you can't fix bad coding or major errors like duplicated content, duplicated meta tags and so on the company owning the site will see less progress in comparison to if you could fix all of the technical aspects to webmaster guidelines. That said it really depends on how well the closed cms is made and if it gives you other options to fix issues. 
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  E.Dieter Martin: Yes, if you have to the code you can make every site perfect. The question is, ow much effort does it take and can you recreate it with ease for other sites. That's certainly easier done with WordPress than with Weebly.
  
  There is a break even point somewhere between redoing the site with easier to create SEO or continuing to use Weebly, with more effort going into the SEO part.
  
  Of course there is also the aspect of look and feel of a designer built site vs a Weebly site. This might not translate directly into SEO value but it will create better user acceptance.
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  Ryan Cramer: I think there is a balance. For any who say that there may be bad coding in someone doing it by hand, I wonder if they keep up with all the updates to their CMSs and plugins - bad code can be found in both.  ;
  
  I think the scariest thing with CMSs is the false confidence that they will deliver on the SEO promises. As the developer/webmaster sometimes you have to wait for the plugin and CMS developers to make available certain things to improve the quality of the site.  ;Additionally, CMSs try to handle all options, causing server and code overhead that can reduce the effectiveness of your site.
  
  On the other hand, designing and developing from scratch can be difficult if you are not including things that are commonly found in common CMSs - automatic page submissions, sitemap updates, etc.  ;Some things include APIs that are more difficult to set up from scratch as well.
  
  Although a WELL DEVELOPED site from scratch will perform better than a CMS, there are too few real web developers (not just designers) that can handle the task anymore.  ;So, the best option is to have an open source CMS that you can alter the code.... just make sure you are making the code changes in the appropriate places so that the core and plugin updates do not overwrite your personal updates.
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  Edwin Jonk: From the expert panel in this weeks SEO Questions hangout on air on 00:04:32 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/does_css_design_affect_the_website_effectiveness_in_term_of_seo +Diana Smith
  
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