I am a new web developer and I want an experienced opinion on page structure for best SEO. Currently I am developing a site that has the following structure: 1. Navigation bar 2. The page content So what I'm asking is if it is better to put the navigation bar after the content, so that no links unrelated to the page title and content appear above the actual content. Let's say we have a site page on the subject: Obesity, so the title of the page is about obesity and the content about obesity. But the navigation bar which comes before(above) the actual content contains the following links: "News" "Facts" and other links that are not related to the actual page subject.
I tend to be pro-navigation bars before the content, in hopes that when Google indexes the site, it will pick up the various sections and show those as well with the listing. Can't think of what that's called at the moment, though I'm sure I'll think of it later.
I'm using another trick - nav bar goes after top SEO text. Google reads page from top-left to bottom-right, so this works better for me
It doesn't matter, what important is that you the right "title,alt, meta etc" which are the basic need of a site to be seo friendly.
It is known that search engines will value the first text on a page rather then last text. However, this is not an essential seo metric. This is why some people and I will put the sidebar on the right of the screen, so that the content is first read.
As reign29 has said, it doesnt matter, because it is just a navigation bar. Build your site for the human visitor, and search engines will follow. Human visitor expects to see navigation bar at the top somewhere.
page structure isnt an issue. Just make sure you have lots of internal/external links and make it easy for your readers to navigate through
According to me page structure does not matter, if have to designed your page which must be user friendly, all page name must be your targeted keywords, and your links must be in a tree structure, and there should not be more then 4 deep url.....
Make sure you can create page with user friendly & search engine friendly.Put navigation first then content .. Google read pages from top-left to bottom right
I prefer to put the navigation bar before the text. I would make sure that the navigation bar has been coded in plain html links and not images or Java drop-down lists. Images cannot be read by Google, neither can the drop-down lists. Write a decent amount of copy for the page and this must be original and search engine friendly.
I have created the perfet highly seo'd page template. It consiste of one focused kw per page. It's a long list if anyone needs the deatails just pm me.
I use dynamic footer which gives an effect that website is very active.Since google give more preference to dynamic websites like forums.
I don't think this is very important. It is more important most of your links (in and out) and text to be on the subject of the page.
Best of all, add breadcrumbs to your pages with keywords of each page in it, this should negate the factor that you are pointing out, if at all it happens that search engines reads your navigational structure before content, in that case let them read the navigational structure which can help them in listing