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websnail
31-08-2001, 04:10/04:10AM
Hi,

I'm somewhat rusty when it comes to the search engine game and it's starting to dawn on me that I need to look at this a little more at some point but for now I have a more specific question...

I tend to design sites with navigation as a priority and as such I use a lot of table coding and top or side bar menu styles to make sure visitors don't get hopelessly lost. The only problem is that it takes quite a while before a search engine would get through all the text and actually hit any content text.

So, my question is, does this present potential problems or ranking issues for these sort of sites and any suggestions for getting around them?

Needless to say I'm looking at using the standard Meta tags, title, domain name relevancies as much as possible along with Alt tags for images.

Thanks in advance

Martin
highman
31-08-2001, 04:19/04:19AM
Anything you can you do to raise your content in the html will benefit your rankings
There are several ways, the table trick, menu on the left or use css for positioning (do a search for css in this forum)

Another point, if you use JScript for rollovers stuff it all in an external .js flie, or at least move it to the bottom of the page code.

Your target is to get the content within 2 or 3 lines of the opening <body> tag

good luck
Advisor
01-09-2001, 00:07/12:07AM
I personally, have not found it to matter if your content is beneath your navigation on in the code. The search engines spider through the entire page and can easily get to your content. The key is to make sure you DO indeed have content, at least 250 words or so. If you do that, the engines will find it and not care that you have navigational code above it. You will still rank high.

Thus said, many people do swear by the table trick that highman mentioned.

Jill
MazY
01-09-2001, 07:08/07:08AM
I'll second Jill's comments.

Anytime you want to look at my own source, you'll see that the content is at least 100 lines after the body content. Poor rankings as a result? Not a chance. Have your cake and it it too I say!

Just watch the way that Google often may use the ALT tags from any graphical menu items and give you the most hideous and worthless description ever.

I'm really not sure where the "lean & mean" theory originated with regards to the search engine spiders but I really do contest it, in the present day.

On the other hand, you should, as with all code, I guess, try to keep it clean just because, well, just because you should. Just don't ever think that you can't do what you like with tables without being ranked down the bottom. It isn't the fact and I'll prove it anytime.


I suppose that I may have a few more #1 positions with leaner code, who knows? But I'm not exactly short of #10 positions so what's the point?
Advisor
01-09-2001, 12:19/12:19PM
It is simply common sense that the search engines are programmed to ignore code that is of no benefit to them. With all the fancy designs these days, it's in their best interest to just "get to the meat" and that's exactly what they do. I think the days of having to have a "big, ugly, dumb" page (as Danny calls them, I think), really are beginning to be over. Sure those pages will rank high, but it doesn't mean you HAVE to have those. Pages can look nice, and read nice, and get top positions on all of the engines. My client sites have plenty of top rankings to prove it. And some of them are some pretty fancy, complicated sites (I have nothing to do with the design, I just optimize what I get.)

Jill
ihelpyou
01-09-2001, 18:43/06:43PM
This seems to be very true. However, since I have many good ranks with the content at the bottom and also with the content at the top, I have to side on prefering the content to be at the top.

Lean and mean has to mean something when it comes to SEO and the less js has to mean something as well and the content at the top as well. It would only make sense. Both can do real well though as long as the content has lots of keyword rich phrases in it. I just would rather work a site that is leaner with less js script.

Just like with all the extra meta tags some sites have that are not needed and mean nothing. Eventhough it may not harm the site to have all these tags, I delete them anyway. Some robots are not as sharp as others. They are all primitive anyway with some better. To avoid any possibility of a spider getting tangled up and slowing down cause of lots of extra tags or lots of js script, I get rid of it when I can. Simply a preference and maybe being paranoid.
Web Witch
01-09-2001, 19:37/07:37PM
Name your graphics to aid in a search. Example Google's new search....

WW