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orion_joel
09-18-2008, 09:56 AM
Hi All,

This is maybe something that may be a little beyond the forum, however i am hoping that maybe i am wrong.

I have read one little thing somewhere i think that mentioned you can organize the order that content is loaded for a page so that when your page loads the main text of the content is the first thing loaded, followed by the other things like menu's and headers.

The thing i read mentioned this was done so that when search engines visited the site they got the main stuff first rather then cutting it off because it was so far down the page.

Does anyone know much about this or can point me in the direction of something that may be able to help me out figuring this out.

Thanks for any help you can offer

vangogh
09-18-2008, 10:36 AM
With css you can pretty much order your html any way you want and still it get it to display any way you want. There's no real easy way to explain how since it depends on each design and how you want to organize the html and how you want it to display.

However the search engine benefits probably aren't worth what you might be thinking and as long as you write clean code you shouldn't have a problem. Years ago the amount of content search engines would spider was limited, but they spider more content now. (Check the date on the articles you read to see how recent they are).

I think search engines claim they'll now index everything, but I have seen some tests indicating they eventually stop crawling a page. It is a reason to write clean code, but I'm not sure how important it is to worry if the content comes first on the page.

When I code I still generally do things top down. I have the header, then the left column, the right column, and the footer.

orion_joel
09-18-2008, 11:11 AM
The main reason i was interested was that the page makes use of a prebuilt CMS system and when i look at the source, it seems that is quite a lot of junk (eg menu's, and stuff above the content, should i worry about this or maybe my impression of a lot is not as drastic as i think it is.

cbscreative
09-18-2008, 11:33 AM
Even if it's not for SEO per se, there is still benefit to organizing your content so the HTML reads "top down" and CSS controls the layout. Like vangogh said, this is complicated to explain, but I wrote an article a few years ago that shows exactly how to do this, and it's published in a lot of places. If you have a basic grasp of HTML and CSS, my article shows an example (http://www.google.com/search?q=%22seo+benefits+of+css%22+chittenden&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7) of the techniques to do this, including code that can be used to test the technique.

One other reason to do this is because of the wierd display you often see in search engine results. Google especially takes snippets from the page and diplays them based on the search terms. If your left navigation is at the top of your code, the snippets displayed might be more like "click here" instead of useful content because search engine bots still read top down even if they index the whole page.

billbenson
09-18-2008, 02:28 PM
If its a new site, G will usually just take a quick glance at it and not look at the whole page or site. Later another bot will come and do a more thorough look at the site. What the first bot sees and where the initial links come from probably affect how quickly the second bot comes back. For me it always seems to be the same day or within a day or two. For that reason IMO it may make sense at first to have content toward the top, at least on the index page. Either way the entire page will eventually get indexed. I'm also a fan of getting JavaScript off page as well as css. Just less stuff the bots need to weed through. It can't hurt.

I like three column design sites. Header, top nav bar, left column, center column right column and footer. Its very straight forward navigation for the visitor. With that format its a pain to put the main content at the top of the page, so I don't. The body content comes after the left column.

If your content is further down the page, it makes proper use of tags more important. I try to get the H1 tag at the top, sometimes putting it in the header. If your main content is further down the page source, use the other heading tags to tell the search engine this is what is important on the page. Don't make the search engine guess.

Just my opinion.

orion_joel
09-18-2008, 07:00 PM
Thank-you for your answers Vangogh, CBS, and Bill. What you say does make sense, and probably means i don't have to make this into a headache, and can save myself plenty of time, by just skipping to other more important things.

vangogh
09-18-2008, 08:16 PM
I don't want to say not to think about how to code your site, but more don't get too obsessed with feeling like the content has to be first.

As a quick example say you have a two column site. The display the columns you could float both left, in which case the column code showing first in the html will end up being the left hand column. You could alternatively change the first block of column code to float to the right and in that case the first column in the code would naturally end up being the right column.

That is something I would take into account when coding, but not specifically for search engines. One reason could be for people viewing the site at a much lower resolution, maybe on a mobile device. On the smaller resolution the column html that appears first will be on top while the column html that comes second is now further down the page.

Consider a site where you have a menu in a column on the left and your content in the column on the right. It won't matter to someone viewing your page on a computer monitor how you coded that. It will mattter to a person viewing your site on their phone. On the mobile device it's probably better to have the content first. Given that I might choose to place my content column first in the html and then float it right so it still appears as the right hand column.

I hope that makes sense.

The main idea is that you can code a web page in many different ways and still have it look exactly the same. Which way you choose is something you can and should consider, but don't obsess over it.

cbscreative
09-18-2008, 08:43 PM
Not to over complicate the matter, and I'm quite sure vangogh would know this but most likely was just keeping things more simplified, you can use CSS to control mobile display. That's stepping up to a higher level than we're discussing here, but it's something good to be aware of just for reference.

vangogh
09-18-2008, 10:55 PM
Oh yeah. You can definitely do more with css to control mobile viewing. I just used that as a quick example.

billbenson
09-18-2008, 11:06 PM
But VG. The million dollar question; if the coding effort is equal, would you put you content at the top or not worry about where it is in the source?

orion_joel
09-19-2008, 12:34 AM
I think that one of the biggest questions could be is it yet worth the effort to cater to mobile users. While there are some sites that will absolutely benefit from it, there is by far many more that would not even know they can access websites through their mobile.

For example at this point to my knowledge only one of the banks in Australia has made any effort to cater to mobile users, and aligned it nicely with the launch of the Iphone 3G in Australia. Not that i think people who bought the iPhone are going to go running out to change banks because of it.

vangogh
09-19-2008, 02:22 AM
@Bill - When I make that decision, search engines usually aren't the first thing on my mind. I know some people say it's important to have your content appear first. I think search engines have gained enough understanding of how a web page is put together that it's not necessary.

@Joel - I think in a very short time mobile devices will the be primary means by which people access the web. Certain business will more naturally benefit from the mobile web and people will use the web differently over a phone than they will sitting at a computer.

At first most business won't see how they can benefit through mobile, but then again many people still haven't figured out how to profit from the web even though they could. Mobile is only going to open up more and new opportunities.