Hi guys,
Just to clarify. Google reads the sourcecode. In the order the
sourcecode is presented. Of course you can reposition with css. That
doesn't change the order of the sourcecode. Google doesn't generally
request the CSS file (check your logs) - unless other flags are
indicated (e.g positioning text off page, display: none etc) so it had
no idea of column display rendering.
Web Standards is Content= X/HTML; presentation = CSS; behaviour etc
I've done the SEO on some of the biggest publisher/ ecommerce sites in
Australia, over the past 8 years, and have never seen a Google issue
with css repositioning in a 2 or 3 column layout. Check most newspaper
etc sites.
Here's a really old example - my personal hobby site.
Google: Austin Healey 3000
and view the cache of the site http://www.myaustinhealey.com. Then
look at the 'text only version' in the Google cache. It's a really old
3 column css layout from 2002. Centre column first in the source.
I'd post the cache links, but I'm sending this from an iPhone, and I'm
still waiting for 'cut and paste' functionality.... Sigh.
Chris
www.cogentis.com.au
On 15/04/2009, at 7:10 PM, Jason Grant <ja...@flexewebs.com> wrote:
All these things are 'within reason'.
I have seen SEO agencies advise putting the main content immediately
after <body> and then repositioning everything else with CSS into
right places.
This is likely not to be possible on some designs and Google is
smart enough to sift through the initial junk on the page to get
through to the main content also.
There's another argument that says that your main navigation help
Google index other pages on the site, so if you are putting that
after the main content you are making deeper indexing of your site a
little harder for Google, as it has to do more work to follow the
links.
Hence nothing is black and white here.
Perhaps you should try both solutions for a while and see if it
makes a difference.
If you can't be bothered, I would go with 'regular source order',
whatever that is for your site.
Thanks,
Jason
PS: Also, if you need more SEO advice let me know.
On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 7:22 AM, Rob Enslin <robens...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Hi Caleb,
I might be wrong but anecdotal evidence suggests order is not an
'issue' for bots scanning your site. I'm other words by in large so
long as your code is structured correctly your <h1>, <h2> etc will
be indexed appropriately.
The only caveat/exception is non-valid code. Also, long, heavy and
bloated code where important tag info is burried way down the page,
can impact on indexability - stuff that's simply not best practice.
-- rob
// Rob Enslin
// twitter.com/robenslin
On 15 Apr 2009, at 06:21, Caleb Wong <carbon.ca...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
I have a SEO question regarding how search engines scans a website.
Say for example if I have a site where it has a 3 column layout.
Column left and column right appears before the middle column area,
and within column left, right there are h2, h3 tags; within the
middle column there is a h1 tag.
The source code goes something like this...
<column_right>
<h2>
</column_right>
<column_left>
<h2>
</column_left>
<column_middle>
<h1>
</column_middle>
So would search engines pick up on the h1 header that appears at the
bottom of the page, or picks up on the first header (regardless its
weight) it sees.
Cheers
Caleb
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--
Jason Grant BSc, MSc
CEO, Flexewebs Ltd.
www.flexewebs.com
ja...@flexewebs.com
+44 (0)7748 591 770
Company no.: 5587469
www.twitter.com/flexewebs
www.linkedin.com/in/flexewebs
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