[Haris]

In a 2-column scenario, do you code sidebar first or the content area?

[freelancr]

I think I read somewhere that the content should appear as high on the source as you can get it.

[logo]
[page title]
[content]
[nav]
[footer]

though I have had sites with 2 navigation areas that I do like this:

[logo]
[menu]
[page title]
[content]
[nav]
[footer]

to be honest, I don't think it matters.

[weldo]

putting yer content before the nav will help SEs to gather info on the page content (some only read up to a certain number of characters)

that said, lists of internal site links also have a worth in building up a picture of page relationships - so thats also good ...

that doesn't help at all does it ?

[resten]

Content before navigation ^^.

[pgo]

Content should go as high as possible. On our corporate site, I managed to use fancy positioning to put all the content at the very beginning of the HTML.

Everything goes below the content in source, but above it visually.

Now, normally, I just follow the logical order.

Logo, Navigation, Content, Sub-Content, Footer

Basically.

[Bill Posters]

Content before navigation

Can someone point me to some categorical evidence that C>N is influential?
Ta.

[funkyprem]

Originally Posted by Bill Posters

Can someone point me to some categorical evidence that C>N is influential?
Ta.

yes. Google and Yahoo!

[funkyprem]

on a serious note, i remember someone doing an experiment on this a year or two ago to find out how much of a page the SE's actually indexed and from memory I think the lowest was yahoo with 40kb and biggest was google with 1.3mb! The search engines attached to the figures may be wrong but even then 40kb should be more than enough to house your content and nav.

[herkalees]

While I will agree, to the death, that your main content should be placed higher in the markup than any other content, I'm also of the mindset that you begin "splitting hairs" at this point, and your time and energy is better spent making quality content on your pages.

[funkyprem]

Originally Posted by herkalees

that your main content should be placed higher in the markup than any other content,

no arguements from me mate. i always try to place the content area first even when the nav is on the left which can cause some problems.

[Bill Posters]

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.

i always try to place the content area first even when the nav is on the left which can cause some problems.

What kind of problems?

[pgo]

I cannot attest to a causal relationship between C>N, but I can point to a positive correlation.

I was tasked with doing whatever I could to improve our position on the SERPs for our corporate site. After adding more keywords and optimizing titles and h1s as well as content, results improved, but marginally.

However, when I moved the content to the very beginning of the source (so the <h1> was close to <body>, our results jumped to the first or second page for most search phrases.

So, while anecdotal evidence isn't to be trusted, generally, I think it's fairly safe to say it has a positive effect.

[Bill Posters]

Originally Posted by pgo

So, while anecdotal evidence isn't to be trusted, generally, I think it's fairly safe to say it has a positive effect.

This is the problem.
It's difficult, if not impossible, to state whether your upsurge was due directly to the switch to C>N.

There's seems to be some anecdotal evidence to suggest that there might be a benefit, the vast majority of it years old, but there's also evidence to suggest that the benefit is questionable.

e.g. A member of WMW states how he started out with C>N, then after a while, switched to N>C and experienced no dip in his serps performance.


I wouldn't have a problem with C>N were it not for the way that it 'breaks' what I consider to be the natural IA order of the underlying document (i.e. w/o CSS).
Search engines themselves tell us not to build to favour them, but to favour users. To this end, I feel that honouring the natural IA order is more important than any suspected benefit which C>N might still offer (if any).

I'm torn over the issue, but I'm currently favouring N>C on the basis that IA trumps SEO.

[cjgraphix]

for me it's a little of both. Closest to body I will place an h1 with company name and then a short h2 of a keyword dense sentence (much like a meta description). If needed I'll go ahead and add another p tag and give more content. Enough to get noticed, but not cause a screen reader to go on for ever before getting to any type of navigation.

So this is my 2 cents. Put some keyword heavy content as close to the top/body as makes sense. But not necessarily all your content before the navigation.

Either way, content is king in this web world! No matter where it is... but it should be everywhere!

[JesseLY]

This is obviously a complex subject that has many variables. In my view, content is king.

My own site is a perfect example. The code sucks. I designed it years ago before I knew that much about proper coding. But it got so high in the search engines that I've been afraid to change it and ruin a good thing. So even with my crappy code, my site is generally at the top (in Google) for "web site design seattle", "Seattle web designer", or any variation thereof.

So my experience shows - content is king!

-Jesse L. Young

[lans2gt]

content first

[roto]

Originally Posted by JesseLY

This is obviously a complex subject that has many variables. In my view, content is king.

My own site is a perfect example. The code sucks. I designed it years ago before I knew that much about proper coding. But it got so high in the search engines that I've been afraid to change it and ruin a good thing. So even with my crappy code, my site is generally at the top (in Google) for "web site design seattle", "Seattle web designer", or any variation thereof.

So my experience shows - content is king!

At least you're honest...so, are you inundated with work from such great placement?

[JesseLY]

Actually, I am indeed often inundated with work. I get way more requests than I can handle (although for the past month it's gotten kind of slow). One month I had 45 requests for new web sites.

Unfortunately, many of them are not right for me. After I weed out the crazies ("I want to sell my homemade pot holders and get rich! Can you make me a web site to do that?"), and the ones that are way beyond my capabiliites ("I'd like my site to be just like Amazon.com. Can you do that for me?"), I narrow it down to the realistic small /medium sized businesses such as law firms, construction companies, etc. And even then there's only so much I can take on and still maintain my sanity.

So I get lots of requests, but can realistically only do so much.

-Jesse

[roto]

Originally Posted by JesseLY

After I weed out the crazies ("I want to sell my homemade pot holders and get rich! Can you make me a web site to do that?"), and the ones that are way beyond my capabilities ("I'd like my site to be just like Amazon.com. Can you do that for me?")

They're everywhere.

[Haris]

Don't you guys think that placing content before the breadcumb loses the semantic value of HTML?