Content Before Navigation in Code

RayB · #1 (**permalink**) 07-08-2008, 21:08

Just after the thoughts of my fellow SEO's on this one!

My A Local Printer website currently places all the navigation and sidebars after the page content via CSS stylesheet coding - thus bringing the <head> tag right up the code, so the <h1> appears shortly after the meta tags etc.

Seems to work for me, but of couse some KW rich nav links are pushed to the bottom

I'm after views on how my SEO colleagues view/approach this as I'm in the middle of a website re-vamp at the moment and I'm playing with the navigation layout at this time.

I also believe personally that only key navigations should be sitewide and secondary ones selectively placed for logical user experience - but also to intelligently sculpt internal Pagerank towards your most important pages as a handy by-product of this approach.......

Thoughts?????

nass · #2 (**permalink**) 07-08-2008, 22:08

As you say, it all depends if doing that will "outweigh" the kw rich links. The reason I have my css topnav nav before content at my phone systems site is exactly those kw rich links (all that "avaya" stuff in the menu). Fwiw, you don't have to use absolutely positioned CSS for that, what you can do is have a table with a rowspan trick like this:

Code:

<table width="100%"  border="1">
<tr>
<td height="10">&nbsp;</td>
<td rowspan="2" valign="top">
<h1>h1</h1>
<p>content</p>
<p>more content</p>
<p>even more content</p>
<p>wow. and even more content</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">nav</td>
</tr>
</table>

If you've got any pages using a leftnav maybe have a trial using that sort of structure, see what happens to your serps.

RayB · #3 (**permalink**) 07-08-2008, 22:24

Thanks nass, some useful ideas you have planted there

An Oasis · #4 (**permalink**) 08-08-2008, 05:41

Interested to see if it makes any difference. Went from a traditional tables based site with nav pre content to CSS with content after nav and no difference in the SERP's

awebapart · #5 (**permalink**) 08-08-2008, 10:53

We have placed content before navigation in some of our websites, including:

www.awebapart.com
www.ellemoda.co.uk (shop section)
www.cctransportnorthants.co.uk

and it doesn't seem to do any harm, perhaps some good. It is difficult to say without conducting a thorough like for like scientific experiment on this. We didn't do it purely for SEO reasons, but also to make the sites a bit different, i.e. navigation on the right rather than on the left. I also prefer the idea of navigation on the right (when it isn't hierarchical) from a design/ergonomics viewpoint, since most people are right handed with the mouse navigation device on the right of the keyboard content device, a keyboard itself has the navigation arrow keys to the right of the main keys, most people have their mouse cursor on the right hand side for the scroll bars, real world tabbed folders have tabs on the right, etc.

I can understand why there might be benefits to this approach, making the content more prominent/important, especially if there is little content on some pages and on these pages the content is smaller than the other stuff. The only original concern I had was that the important links were at the bottom, a place where some websites put a lot of spam keyword rich links, and this might adversely affect things, but it doesn't seem to do any harm (for our sites at least).

With CSS, if you want menus on the left or right, you can also do this without absolute positioning and have the navigation after the content using aligned divs.

Alvin · #6 (**permalink**) 08-08-2008, 12:48

I have nearly always put content straight after the Meta tags.

Alvin

RayB · #7 (**permalink**) 08-08-2008, 12:51

thanks guys, useful posts that basically correlate with my thoughts. The nav on my new site will be more logical, without harming the current SEO structure and internal linking logic

Case · #8 (**permalink**) 10-08-2008, 21:04

I mentioned doing this to our web designer at work and he said you have to consider visually disabled users when ordering the source code.

I have no idea what part this plays in it though. Can anyone elaborate?

An Oasis · #9 (**permalink**) 11-08-2008, 00:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Case

I mentioned doing this to our web designer at work and he said you have to consider visually disabled users when ordering the source code.

I have no idea what part this plays in it though. Can anyone elaborate?

S/he is talking about people who use computer software to "read" websites. The way you structure data needs to help the data to flow for the text reader which reads verbatim. That said most sites don't make this easy as the content mark up makes little sense so the person has to spend time "guessing" what each section is all about.

OldWelshGuy · #10 (**permalink**) 11-08-2008, 07:20

I wouldn't worry about the order personally.

Also there is no legal requirement to place the nav before content for screen readers, ok it is about usability for the disabled but the powers that be have GREATLY exagerrated the amount of 'real' disabled people. The figures they are quoting include those lumps that park in Morrisons blue bays, get out of their BMW x5's and run to the shop to keep out of the rain. They are classed as disabled as they have been on the sick for 26 weeks or more