Layout <> Serp ?

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by Western, Mar 28, 2008.

  1. #1
    is your website ranking on search engines depends on your website layout and design too ?

    for example is there any different between using tables for design or using div tags ?
     
    Western, Mar 28, 2008 IP
  2. choicefreedom2000

    choicefreedom2000 Peon

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    #2
    My Dear Friend

    Definitey but it will depend on how you have design the page !
    Secondly using table and div tags will never effect ranking but it will surely affect you visitor that is 100% sure.

    Let me Expalin you both the points

    1) Suppose you have design a your page in three parts first top part with title in table second part of navigation below that title table and third part of body just next to navigation table. Now what happen google generally crawl from top left to bottom right so first of all it will crawl title then navigation and finally content so in this way you content will be crawled at last therefore the main juice is found by google at last so in this way google will give quality to your site that visitors will find necessary information at this stage.

    2) SEM wise tables are generally loads when then whole table is loaded so if it will take time then visitors can't get anything except blank page so visitors may think that site is not available and click the simple X at the top right. But if you have div then each part will load one by one so visitor can view something and wait for remaining.

    Cool Mate and Enjoy your Day

    Dashanan Sharma
     
    choicefreedom2000, Mar 28, 2008 IP
  3. PHPGator

    PHPGator Banned

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    #3
    Some people say there is a difference, others do not. There are ways to optomize your website. Even though websitegrader.com only shows the basics, i would encourage you to go there and find some things you can do to your website to improve it for search engines.

    As well, http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors <- this is a little bit outdated, but definitely doing the things talked about here will help as well.
     
    PHPGator, Mar 28, 2008 IP
  4. azlanhussain

    azlanhussain Active Member

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    #4
    If your site's MAIN CONTENT is mainly flash, images, videos or even audios you may face a problem. This is because search engine bot only reads text. So you need to do a bit of tweaking in your content so that bot could also recognise your content via text base. Example embedding text description of your flash in your body.

    Hope that helps,
    Azlan
     
    azlanhussain, Mar 28, 2008 IP
  5. Dan Schulz

    Dan Schulz Peon

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    #5
    I see this issue come up all the time - especially on the HTML and CSS boards here at Digital Point and SitePoint.

    The short answer is that basically it won't make an iota of difference, as long as you're using as little code as possible, and that your CSS and client-side scripts are contained in separate files. However, the order the content appears in can make all the difference, not only for search engines but also people who use assistive devices such as screen readers and those who are using browsers that have no real CSS support, such as text-based browsers like Lynx and mobile devices such as older PDAs and cell phones (interesting factoid - the US tends to be between 2-3 years BEHIND Europe and the Far East - mainly China, South Korea and Japan - when it comes to mobile device technology).

    What I do with all the sites I develop is start with the header (which is an actual image surrounded by a DIV container) followed by the menu (or the search form followed by the menu), the main content area, sidebars (menus are not sidebars, and thus do not get included here) and then the footer. HOW those elements are displayed on the screen, however, really makes no difference, since it's the order they appear in the HTML source code that counts.

    Actually, the search engines will read the alternate text on the images, and if the OBJECT element has alternate content embedded (and no I don't mean the fake "EMBED" tags here), they'll read that as well, especially if it's text or an image with alternate text. But that alternate content is mainly there for the benefit of those who cannot see the image, Flash file, or video.
     
    Dan Schulz, Mar 29, 2008 IP
  6. Western

    Western Well-Known Member

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    #6
    Thanks for the advise ,
    but one of my website is running for more than 3 month i bought + 1000 USD of high pr and related link to my website , amazingly i m not still getting even 1 visitor from search engines !
     
    Western, Mar 29, 2008 IP
  7. guitarbinge

    guitarbinge Peon

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    #7
    always simplify--check the cache text and make sure your optimized content is up to, dont use too many nested tables...
     
    guitarbinge, Mar 30, 2008 IP
  8. Western

    Western Well-Known Member

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    #8
    google shows no cache
     
    Western, Mar 30, 2008 IP
  9. SEOrious Results

    SEOrious Results Peon

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    #9
    Part I of effective SEO is on page optimisation....get this wrong and all your off page endeavours will come to naught because the search engine bots won't be able to spider your website content.
     
    SEOrious Results, Mar 30, 2008 IP
  10. pipes

    pipes Prominent Member

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    #10
    From what ive read, tables add more code, creates heavier pages, ideally you want to be using CSS if you can, hence im trying to learn CSS. :)
     
    pipes, Mar 31, 2008 IP
  11. Dan Schulz

    Dan Schulz Peon

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    #11
    CSS code can be just as bloated. Trust me on this, I've seen it.
     
    Dan Schulz, Mar 31, 2008 IP
  12. advancedfuture

    advancedfuture Banned

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    #12
    tables do generally create additional code because there are extra tags when using tables <tr><td> unlike div.

    What i generally do for best practice is write my page with DIV and CSS. I ban the robots from reading the CSS file in my robots.txt since it isn't really necessary anyways. The code is generally very clean. by sure that the ID on your DIVS contain the keywords that you are optimizing for.

    If you ARE going to use tables be sure to use the summary= tag and include your keywords in that.

    But in the end it doesn't really matter because I think the spiders read up to 300kb on the page, and even if you do suffer from mild code bloat I doubt most pages come close to reaching 300kb in length.

    Anyways I hope that helps.
     
    advancedfuture, Mar 31, 2008 IP
  13. Dan Schulz

    Dan Schulz Peon

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    #13
    Last I heard the limit was around 100kb. Not that it matters for those using Notepad since it only handles up to 65k anyway.
     
    Dan Schulz, Mar 31, 2008 IP
  14. nairbuoyevoli

    nairbuoyevoli Active Member

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    #14
    i think its about SE also weight your site.. if its easy to upload and read.. it has the great factor on rankings..
     
    nairbuoyevoli, Mar 31, 2008 IP