Content At Bottom Of Page in HTML

Good or Bad? Front Page User

[LostOne]

Hi folks. Lurker for some time now. I came across a comment somehwere on this board which had something to do with using a right sided navigation bar. It had something to do with getting the search bots to index your pages better? Is this correct? Make any sense? Currently I use 40 page hyperlinks(on the left) in a two column layout for good navigation. Unfortunately all the real content on the page including H1 tags appear at the bottom of the page.

Thanks:)

Lost

[bill]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld LostOne.

If you're using a table for your layout and you have a 2 column layout, then it's possible that the right-hand navigation scheme would bring your page's content closer to the top of the page. You can accomplish the same thing with a left column navigation by using the old table trick [webmasterworld.com].

This doesn't necessarily get your pages ranked any higher. It's just thought to be friendlier to the SE spiders. In some cases if you're in a competitive field every little trick helps edge you over the competition.

[LostOne]

Thanks for the information Bill. I have to get something going. Some pages used to be on Google's first page earlier this year. Now they have slipped past page 6, 10...and.. with no changes done. Well the site itself has grown about 200% to 1200 pages. I believe I have good original content but everybody is now sailing past me:( Some of the top positions have very little content whatsoever. Must be the new Google.

I'll experiment with a few pages and see what happens. I never realized WW had a right hand navigation setup(didn't pay much attention to it). I wonder what the reasoning behind that was? Must be some benefit?

[yngwin]

In general, for SEO, it is best to have your content placed on top (in the source). Further, keep the fileweight light (<100kB), use semantic code, and put scripts and stylesheets in seperate files.