In the HTML - what should come first

Heyya,

Here's a question that's been bugging me. With CSS based sites, you can position something on the screen independantly of where it appears in the markup.

So given that freedom, what is the better order for SEO? Menu then content (much like a traditional table site) or content then menu?

Thoughts?

usually content, then menu. usually, your content has the meat of the text that you want google to spider so that it can best determine what your page theme is, and what your most important keywords are. i suppose, however, that if you have very little content, but your menu is rich in themed keywords, then i can see how putting the menu at the top might be beneficial. but generally, i'd say content is most likely what you want as close to the top as possible.

Before my menu was on top.
When I would look at site: ... it would show like 20 of all the pages and I had to use the "include all ..." at the end of the list to get all pages.
Now they are all displayed. Like less duplicate content...
Maybe a coincidence...

Ok, so then in the case of say: a blog, text heavy, or article based site, you'd want that content to come first. What about a store, where the content is really just pictures and captions and stuff, and the menu has those keywords you want?

But in general then, order does in fact matter?

whether or not it matters is debatable. i think it does matter, for these reasons...
1. if for some reason google trips over something somewhere on your page, and cannot continue to read the rest of the page, then at least it will have read the beginning of it - which is where you've put the most important stuff.
2. i believe google says to itself... "gee, whatever is at the top of this page must be the most important point of the page" - kind of like a heading at the top of a paragraph would be. (although a conclusion at the bottom is a good idea as well, i believe).

theres a lot of people that believe google weights keywords 'heavier' when they are closer to the top.
same witht he title....words closer to the front are given more weight.
it makes sense to me.
so feed the bots first whatever you want to target the greatest.





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The other advantage of having content first is in the snippit that Google uses for the description in the serps. It'll normally take the first bunch of words on the page with all the keywords in.

Let's say you have a web design site. For a "web design search you will see (with the navigation first):

VORD Web Design
portfolio - web design - search engine optimisation - cool dude this vord - accessibility -.........

That makes no sense. But with content first you will see:

VORD Web Design
VORD Web Design is based in Bedfordshire UK. We quote fixed, affordable prices.......

Much better for attracting visitors.

exactly!
great point.
think about those serp listings.




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That is a good point. But then the question becomes; which is more important - keywords first or a sentence based serps?

What's to stop you having both? If you are only focusing on a couple of key phrases per page then they would normally be in the top of your copy anyway.

yes...very good common sense stuff there.
a no-brainer.

On subpages maybe, but not necessarily on a home page. You can be targeting your services/products, but the copy could be a welcome statement or a little about your company.