54 replies to this topic

[maleman]

Scottie said:

Some people believe the closer to the top or the page the content is, the better.

but all engines strip out the code, so the amount of code doesn't seem to have any bearing on indexing or ranking.

Hey Scottie are you sure about the stripping out of code?

Do search engines not look at the tags and attributes? When I look at a cached page in a search return, I see the page as it normally appears with the keywords highlighted.

I always wondered how the cached page could look normal if the program didn't consider the tags.

Maybe the cached page has nothing to do with indexing....... but the keywords are still highlighted.

I also discovered a way to put either <tr> in a <table> to the top of the table source without using any rowspan, colspan, or nesting tricks or adding any extra tags to a normal table and still get the same display. I figured this out while digging through doctype definitions at w3c. I've never seen this done anywhere before.

[qwerty]

There's no doubt that they take at least some of the specific tags into account. If they didn't, you wouldn't get much useful information from an intitle or inanchor search.

And we've all gone through the "do headings count, and if so is an <h2> weighted more heavily than an <h3>" debates for years.

I don't think anyone knows if they flag every word with the tag in which it's located, and if not, which ones they ignore, but they definitely track some of them.

I'm pretty sure what Scottie was referring to was stuff like javascript. The spiders just cruise past stuff like that.

[Scottie]

Let me rephrase- they ignore the stuff that they don't need.

I can't believe they would think that a site was more relevant (or less relevant) simply because of the way it was structured- because the structure has nothing to do with whether or not the content is best suited to any particular query. When they start making judgements that CSS sites are more relevant than tabled sites, we'll see the top of the SERP's full of CSS positioned sites, right?

The old "yes, but all things are never equal and the tabled site has x-y-z going for it" makes it nearly impossible to draw a cause and effect, but if it were an edge, I think there would be more evidence of it.

Just my opinion.

Anything is possible though and I could be dead wrong. If it worries someone, they can convert their site to CSS layout and not worry about tables holding their rankings back. Personally, I'm moving a few back to tables because of browser compatibility issues...

[Sleeve]

This list of pure CSS websites inspired me: http://meryl.net/css/index.php also some great tutorials for those who want to learn: http://projectseven....s/css/index.htm

IMHO, CSS is far, far easier than tables to code from a design standpoint.

[Scottie]

Strange Banana is pretty cool for people looking for CSS layouts.

Every time you refresh the page, it creates a new random layout.

[Jill]

I love it! That strangebanana is totally cools!

[Michael Martinez]

Let me rephrase- they ignore the stuff that they don't need. 

More aptly put, they ignore the stuff they strip out. If your code is not structured properly, they can (and sometimes do) strip out content intended for indexing.

I can't believe they would think that a site was more relevant (or less relevant) simply because of the way it was structured- because the structure has nothing to do with whether or not the content is best suited to any particular query.  When they start making judgements that CSS sites are more relevant than tabled sites, we'll see the top of the SERP's full of CSS positioned sites, right?

A few years ago, the idea that content positioned closer to the top of the page (in the source code) seemed to have merit because the search engines were indexing on a top-down model. That is, the top of the page was considered to be the most important part (this carried well beyond search engine indexing -- it applied in banner sales, where "above-the-fold" placement earned higher commissions, and where HTML design tutorials routinely advised people to place the most important content at the top).

Over the past couple of years, there has been increasing evidence (such as the contextual snippets Google offers in its results) that the search engines have been parsing the pages into segments. There have been some technical papers which explain the advantages of doing this, and clearly the software is more flexible and sophisticated than it used to be.

One of the primary reasons for parsing pages into segments, in my opinion, is to help the search engines separate navigational and advertising content from true page copy. People should not read more into that than there is. They need to figure out what the page is actually about (as opposed to what it promotes) to help determine relevance. They need to figure out what the page promotes (as opposed to what it is about) to help determine relationships. And they may be looking at how closely associated the relevance and relationships are (but that is all entirely speculative -- the patents and technical papers talk about doing these things, but we don't know what is actually being done).

The old "yes, but all things are never equal and the tabled site has x-y-z going for it" makes it nearly impossible to draw a cause and effect, but if it were an edge, I think there would be more evidence of it.

Although I use simplified table structures, I feel there is no edge (with respect to SEO design) to using tables.

Any good, clean code should be fine. However, tables were not really intended to manage page layout. I'm well aware of that. And the day may come when search engines start favoring other design structures. That day may never come.

If it does come, I'll deal with it then.

[samzbuzy]

I have always had the question whether to go for a CSS based layout so that the positioning of content would get better rankings.

However i chose a table layout and organized the webpage into 4 sections. a table for the header image. a table for the top navigation. a table for the content. a table for the footer.

Now when i look at my site description in SERPS of MSN. MSN displays the meta description on my website followed by the top navigation text.

http://search.msn.co... site&FORM=QBRE (site in the 4th place- not sure if i can mention this - if not hope the mod will edit)

This leads me to assume the text immediately following the <body> tag is given weightage, irrespective of its your navigation text or the actual content.

So why not have your content positioned their rather than your navigation?

Though this might be a minor aspect to the gamut of things involved in doing SEO, this might help when targeting the tail of your keyword list.

Regards
Sam

[Jill]

Sam, the search engines use a "snippet"of copy from your page where the searched phrase appears. Yours must be near the navigation, so it picks that up.

Search for your site using different search words, and you'll get a different description from a different part of your site, depending on where those words appear.

This leads me to assume the text immediately following the <body> tag is given weightage, irrespective of its your navigation text or the actual content.

It's not given "weightage." Well it is given weight, just no extra weight beyond any other words on the page. Yes, they index all text on the page, including navigation, but no, they don't give navigation an extra boost because it comes first (in my opinion, of course).

[frobn]

I have always had the question whether to go for a CSS based layout so that the positioning of content would get better rankings.

...This leads me to assume the text immediately following the <body> tag is given weightage, irrespective of its your navigation text or the actual content.

So why not have your content positioned their rather than your navigation?

I know from experience that this is not true. Google has used a description taken from the bottom of my pages. The pages were real estate listings dynamically loaded from a database, but the urls where rewritten to look static. For awhile I was playing a cat and mouse game with Google to see if I could gain some control over the process but I was only about 20% successful.

There appears to be a misconception over tables vs CSS. The problem with tables is that they CAN obscure meaning. For example, I have seen tables cells used to mimic lists with the bullet in one cell and the list item in another cell. While this may look attractive it does take away from whatever relational meaning that a list provides to the items. If, as we believe, SEs are striving for relevant results then it makes sense to think that they will take advantage of the inherent semantic meaning of markup when available. Of course there is nothing to prevent someone from using a list in a table cell, this was only an example of how content can be obscured by design choices.

[qwerty]

...content can be obscured by design choices.

Absolutely

As I see it, there can be no doubt that such choices have a direct impact on some users. Anyone using a screen reader is going to get a glob of text rather than a structured (and scannable) document under some circumstances. I don't know for certain whether it matters to search engines. I actually strongly doubt it. But it matters to someone.

[samzbuzy]

Sam, the search engines use a "snippet"of copy from your page where the searched phrase appears.  Yours must be near the navigation, so it picks that up.

Search for your site using different search words, and you'll get a different description from a different part of your site, depending on where those words appear.

I agree

It's not given "weightage."  Well it is given weight, just no extra weight beyond any other words on the page.  Yes, they index all text on the page, including navigation, but no, they don't give navigation an extra boost because it comes first (in my opinion, of course).

I differ with this. If it were a h1 tag with the specified keyword instead of the navigation at the top could it affect the ranking is probably the question. I am going to test that.

Though my example may not be the perfect test plan to arrive at a conclusion, but may be its a good starting point.

Thanks for your inputs.

Sam

[sph001]

Isn't SEO fun; I enjoy reading this thread and am now confused due to what I had learned "was" best practices. You realize of course there is an engineer at Google reading this and spinning some knobs and changing the SEO world as we speak. I think he is saying that content buried in invisible ink at the bottom of the page now wins.. only kidding (i hope).

anyway...
From what I had known to be best practice; the content and especially the keyword phrase should be closer to the top of the page; because from a user readability standpoint, that makes more sense. If it is at the bottom, a spider could regard the content as spam. This is of course extreme.


If you webpage is all above the fold, then your content is most likely all near the top. If you page scrolls down 1/2 mile - well - my guess is maybe spam if the content cannot be found till the bottom.

I also like to employ includes for JS and Style sheets - cause I heard it makes it easier and quicker for the spider to find the good stuff - the content. No bad coding technique anyway.

In the end; if you have two pages equally SEO'd and the only difference is that the keyword content is higher up then the other - that might make that final decision on ranking one page over another. In reality, there are 100 different adjustments and this is merely one. Get most of them right - you are in great shape.

I say - go with what is best for the visitor (what a concept) and all will work out.

As for Dan's test; I would think that to make it a valid test; it should be on two domains of equal age (or both new...check back in 45 days) and that the content should be similar enough. I wish we could test these things faster...

my mere 3 cents...

Edited by Randy, 19 October 2005 - 12:19 PM.

[Randy]

Welcome Stephen !

I say - go with what is best for the visitor (what a concept) and all will work out.

Amazing little idea isn't it? I'm quite confident that you'll find the vast majority 'round these part agreeing with the concept users should always come first.

FYI, I created a signature for you to keep us within the [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?act=boardrules]Forum Rules[/url]
and so that you won't have to type it into every posts. Feel free to tweak it under the My Controls link above.

[frobn]

Absolutely 

As I see it, there can be no doubt that such choices have a direct impact on some users. Anyone using a screen reader is going to get a glob of text rather than a structured (and scannable) document under some circumstances. I don't know for certain whether it matters to search engines. I actually strongly doubt it. But it matters to someone.

I think the more important aspect is that is does matter to users who have accessibility challenges but does it matter to search engines also?. If I were a search engine how would I know that there was some kind of relationship between a scattered group of words or sentences? Unlike a human reader I would not have the advantage of seeing the layout that looks like a list and I would not have the linguistical knowledge that the items were somehow related. Example, as a search engine how would I know that apples, oranges and bananas are related? I am not saying that SEs take advantage of semantic meaning in markup because I have no way of knowing that, just that IMHO it would be a logical thing to do.