Tables and SEO

This may be a given for lots of you. But I just came across a note about how if you have tables and you have you navigation on the left table which is the first one. It can hurt your placement. I can understand why but of course the guy wants you to pay him $98 for his book to tell you how to fix it. Anybody willing to share that tip for free?
Susan

ok this is how you do it..

you have to add another table height=1px above the navigation table...

then you have to set the table to display: none; in your stylesheet...

if you don't understand what I am saying, buy the guys book

seriously if you need help just ask..

So you mean do this?
<table>
<td height="1"></td>
</table>
Above the other table? I don't do stylesheets I build each page. I know I know, but it's how I started.
Is that right or do I have to "set the table" with "none" like you said. how do I do that? Thanks Susan

Yeah that's what you need to do...

ok, in your head tags add this



what you need to do now is change the table tag to look like this <table id="tablename">

btw, EVERYONE started out with tables, so i think its time for you to upgrade your knowledge or you will find youself learning a whole new language in a few years, if you don't keep up with the times xhtml, css etc...

Can someone explain to me why this is bad?

some people believe that the spider will not spider the whole page because the first thing that it sees are the links, so it follows all the links and think that there is actually no content on the pages...

Do these people who "believe" this "theory" also sell the fix for money?

Respectfully, I think I need more guidence and help, otherwise I'm taking my money and my significant other out to dinner Or sward and I can go to dinner.

Imagine this:

Pure HTML and no styles:

A table. Inside this table are 2 more tables. The table on the left has my menu structure via SSI. The other table has my variable content.

If this is what we are talking about, I can tell you that Dr. G follows every single link and the content is also spidered. My ranking are pretty good

The other issue is this: If I'm going to pay lets say $90 for this super secret fix and we can assume that my RPV is say 0.25 cents I need a recapture period plus profit. Thats about 360 new uniques from G to break even on the cost alone and I've still not factored in the time that is required to fix 500 pages.

I'm not trying to start a fight, I have plenty of those in my own sandbox. Rather, I'm trying to understand the logic and exactly what we are talking about. Help.

i never said I believe it, i was just showing her/him that the way to fix this problem, which some people believe is a problem...

if that makes any sense...

I believe the "problem" is simply that spiders tend to read the tables on the left before the rest of the page content. Since more importance is usually given to text higher up on the page, and if the table is a simple navigation menu, you may have lost the chance to get your keywords higher up the page. You can use one of the many spider simulator tools out there to see how this works.

Basically, that's all it is.

Gringo.

I agree with Gringo on this issue. I had seen some improvements for the rangkings of several of my customers' websites and pages, by only moving the links/content from the very right column of a table with 3 columns on to the top <td colspan=3>.

The issue is, as Gringo states, the content and the links in the far left colums get a higher priority. It's a language and a browser technology related issue as well. All the latin languages are written from left to right and that's how all the browsers and spiders read it as well.

I don't know if the same applies to Arabic based search engine spiders and results though.

Wow guys Thanks! Interesting regardless. I understand page weight and wanting keywords near the top. But I thought links with keywords would be ranked higher because of showing pages with common interest. In other words If my body text keywords are also in my links, which go to inner more detailed pages, wouldn't that be favorable? I usually place the few outgoing links lower on the page.
What exactly does the code you suggested do? Would the spider completely disregard my links then?
Hey Steve always up for dinner! Susan ;)

Ok, here's a crazy idea, why not post your links table on the right instead?

I know most people are used to having it on the left since most of'em in the Western world read from left to right, as you've already stated. But hey, if I had my navigation menu on the right it'd take less of a move with the mouse to reach them.

Again, just an idea, but I'm gonna try it out.

Here are some good CSS layout examples:

http://glish.com/css/7.asp

http://www.bluerobot.com/web/layouts/

Nice thing about this is you can have your cake and eat it; your content can come first in the document tree but still be displayed after the left side navigational elements.

Devniall,

Great post. Solves some immediate issues for me.

May you be rewarded in the dance!

[quote="devniall"]
http://www.bluerobot.com/web/layouts/ quote]

inside is a link to this site http://www.alistapart.com/index.html with PR8 and only 212 inbound links. How is it possible?