Web design and SEO go hand-in-hand though a good looking design doesn't mean good SEO it at least means that visitors will find your site appealing. Smashing Magazine have done a survey of top blogs to see what sort of design trends can be spotted. It well worth the read for design tips because these sites, with 10000's of visitors every set the style for everyone else.

1.4. Width of the fixed layout?

As we have observed a strong trend toward fixed, pixel-based design layouts, we have decided to take a closer look at these layout and try to detect common attributes of such layouts. In particular, we have considered the width of the fixed layout which usually corresponds to the width of #container or #wrapper. Apparently,

• 9% used ≤ 800px
  (PostSecret, Seth Godin, Google Blog, BeppeGrillo.it),
• 15% used 801 – 900px
  (Neatorama, Kottke, DailyKos, Perezhilton, TUAW, Yanko Design, Scobleizer),
• 20% used 901 – 950px
  (Huffington Post, BoingBoing, TreeHugger, Dooce, Blogoscoped, SearchEngineLand),
• 56% used 951 – 1000px
  (ars technica, Lifehacker, TechCrunch, ProBlogger, A List Apart, TMZ, Wired, GigaOM, Joystiq, Zenhabis, Copyblogger, Consumerist, Slashfilm).

Conclusion: one can identify a clear trend toward wide fixed layouts of the width 951 – 1000px.

A Small Design Study Of Big Blogs