From what I've seen and read, the benefits of placing content before nav (C>N) may have been tangible some years back. But, in more recent times, Google et al have become smarter at spotting where the real content starts, regardless of where it appears in the source order, to the point where it really doesn't matter whether you use C>N or the more conventional N>C model, at least as far as seo goes.
Yet, I still see the C>N thing pushed on the basis of SEO (and accessibility - usually based on arguments which I also consider to be unproven at best).
I've yet to see any categorical evidence that C>N improves search engine performance these days. It just seems to be one of those things which ceased being true years ago, but which the thinking of many developers/authors and seo-snakeoil salesmen is too out-of-date to amend.
(Of course, as funkyprem mentions, the N>C model is only likely to become an issue if a site has many 10s or 100s of Kb of non-content markup ahead of the content, as this could potentially push the content beyond the limits of the search bots index range. Although, conversely, if there's so much content that the nav is pushed out of range, that could potentially damage a site's internal link structure and consequently, its indexability.
It's pretty safe to say that most modern, efficiently coded sites are not hulking masses of multi-100Kb, so content is going to fall within range, even if the nav comes before it.)
In the absence of any categorical tests which prove it one way or the other, it would be great to have Matt Cutts and his opposite numbers over at Yahoo, etc… go on the record and clarify precisely what effect, if any, source order has on indexability and relevance of content.
I certainly don't see N>C sites playing second-fiddle to C>N in the serps.
As said, I've yet to see any evidence which demonstrates that it makes
any discernable difference to a site's performance in the serps.
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i always try to place the content area first even when the nav is on the left which can cause some problems.
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What kind of problems?