is my text buried too deeply?

[tonyww]

Hi,

a client has a web page where the html occupies about the first 4/5ths of the page (when viewed in notepad).

The text eventually starts with a list of text based internal links, then a keyword rich h1 and then the text itself. We use meta description and a good title.

I understand the keywords should be used as as 'soon' as possible on the page, so would the structure of this page work again us?

Would a SE indexer ignore the html and head for the text even though it's way down the file?

It looks ok in a spider simulator.

Thanks, Tony

[diamondgrl]

Having too much code at the top is something that is sometimes kicked around as less-than-desirable. I don't have any side-by-side comparisons I could point you to where it is definitively something you should worry about. I personally have not taken any steps to rectify this but I've had it on a To Do list just to see.

[hannamyluv]

It is generally thought that the higher up on the page the text appears (HTML included), the more important the spiders think the text is. Also, lots of code in front of your text can possibly foul up a spider, so why take the chance?

Put js on the server. Put your stylesheet on the server, rather than on the page. Look into converting tables into layers, so that you can manipulate where in the code the text appears.

[greenleaves]

I have seen positive results when I re-order the page text to come up on top. The positive results could have been due to other factors, but I believe it helped. Plus, having a clean, ordered code, IMO, always helps.

[mifi601]

remember, computers are looking at the code! and they LIKE simple 0 and 1s, so the easier it is to find the content ...:)