Is It Worht The Time To Move Header Code to the Bottom? Options

[devilsown]

Is it worth anyones time to redo a website thats in css to have the header and nav etc be in the bottom of the code and have it render at the top? So that the first thing in the view source is pretty much the content.

[qwerty]

I don't think so. I've played around with that and didn't notice a difference. However, you're going to find a lot of people who disagree with me and consider it fairly important.

[maleman]

Is it worth anyones time

Depends on how much time you have and how complex the pages are. You can get into some real complicated business making pages to render cross-browser using pure CSS layouts.

I like to put my important stuff near the top so it gets seen right away. By humans and bots.

[Randy]

Nope, it's not worth the time nor the effort.

[devilsown]

Well it only took me afew minutes to figure it out.
But the downside is ie5 and older will not render it.

I am just trying to think of anything i can do to make my site show up better. I have 1 keyword that i got 1,000 of backlinks for and i just am not getting decent placement for it so trying to pull out all the stops.

[Jill]

your time would be better spent researching a pile of other keyword phrases to optimize for as well.

[devilsown]

your time would be better spent researching a pile of other keyword phrases to optimize for as well.

Defantly can't argure with you on that. Thats one thing i never realy have spend much time on because i don't really know the ins and outs.

[1dmf]

I'd concider the fact that putting the navigation at the bottom fo the page is not user freindly for non-CSS browsers and not meet accessibilty guidelines.

You may not care about this or have implemented any of the guidelines, i'm just pointing this out (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I concider my internal links to be important (nav) , so don't feel the need to move them anyhow.

however if you want to do it, depending on how you have it set up, it shouldn't be too dificult, for me it would simply be a case of moving the Server Side Include (SSI) command to the bottom of the page (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink1.gif)

[Randy]

It's just not worth doing for SEO purposes. It's a complete waste of time IMO.

About the only time it might be prudent is if your Nav items are showing up as your snippet in the SERPs for your most important phrases, but there are other, much better ways to deal with that sort of Markeitng situation.

Yes such utilization of CSS-P to move code around in the file is something I've tested both for SEO and Marketing effects. Since like the late 90's al the way through to today. And I've never seen any effects whatsoever in my testing where SEO is concerned. Only if there's a marketing issue that needs to be sorted and cannot be dealt with any other way.

[1dmf]

good point randy, how common is it for the description meta tag to not be used and the first content to be used instead?

or does it normally only use the content if the description meta tag is missing?

[Randy]

It depends almost entirely on the keyword being searched in my experience 1dmf.

Meaning if the keyword phrase is part of the nav block and and part of the meta descripiton, normally the meta description would show as the snippet.

But by the same token if the keyword phrase is part of the nav block and is not in the meta description the engines will pull it from the first place it sees the term in the page content, which of course can be the nav block.

Basically what snippet ends up getting displayed is keyword phrase dependent, and it depends upon where the phrase first shows up in the code.

[devilsown]

I did have my nav showing up in the serps. Thats the biggest reason i did it.

But to the best of my knollage my site will not render right for ie5 and older. Don't know i dont' have access to that browser.

[Randy]

Browsercam.com will let you look at it as far back as IE4 on some operating systems I believe.

That said, anybody still using IE5 should be shot! There are very valid reasons MS has released two full versions since those horrible, horrible days. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/whistling.gif)

[piskie]

There is a neat little program called "Multople IEs" if I remember right. When it installs, you can check which versions of IE are made available. I only go back tp IE 5.5 because anything older just doesn't feture anymore on the sites that I administer. Also pandering to the quirks of such old browsers is really going to hamper technique.

When I take into account any browser older than IE6, I just make sure they "Degrade Gracefully" rather than render fully as intended.

I won't post a Link, terms of service and all that, but just Google it and You should find it OK.

[Andy1342]

I have a stronger version of the same problem.

I have a top navigation (agreed, not worth rendering at the bottom) and a major left-hand sidebar navigation, and I also have an inspirational quote in a div of its own at the top of each page.

The way the page is set up, to a spider all the text in the header navigation plus the quote div plus the left sidebar navigation comes before any of the text on the page. In some cases this is more than 900 characters of site-keyword-rich text and it is repeated very much the same on every page, before any of the page text.

I keep getting told how important it is to have the page's unique keywords near the top, and I fear that having this semi-standard wadge of text at the top of each page is going to blunt Google's perception of what each unique page is about.

Is this more of a problem than the top navigation? How significant is it to get the left sidebar navigation and quote div to render below the main text?

With good wishes to all

Andy