okay, i want the menu on the left, for usability, but i've heard that a menu on the right can benefit seo, since the robots dont have to read a menu first before getting to the content. please give your comments on this
Paste the below into an html doc and see the difference... <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <TITLE>• Search Engine Friendly Site Design - Template 1</TITLE> <META NAME="description" CONTENT="This a search engine friendly website design included in the SEO Tutor© Opimization Guide."> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="table structure,spider friendly web design,seo template"> <META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <style type="text/css"> H1 {font-family:Arial,sans-serif,Verdana;font-size:25px;font-weight:bold;color:#FFFFFF;margin-bottom:0px;text-align:center;background-color:} H2 {font-family:Arial,sans-serif,Verdana;font-size:20px;font-weight:bold;color:#2B5580;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;text-align:center;background-color:} A {color:#0000FF;text-decoration:underline;} A:Visited {color:#0000ff;text-decoration:underline;} A:Active {color:#FF0000;text-decoration:underline;} A:hover {color:#FF0000;} BODY {font-family:Arial,sans-serif,Verdana;font-size:10pt;background-color:#336699; margin-top:2px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:15px;margin-left:0px; scrollbar-arrow-color:#FFFFFF; scrollbar-base-color:#737879; scrollbar-highlight-color:#F3F4F5;} TD {font-family:Arial,sans-serif,Verdana;font-size:10pt;} .border {border:1px solid #333333} .bodypad {padding-top:12px;padding-right:13px;padding-bottom:65px;padding-left:13px;} .nav {width:130px;padding-left:13px;line-height:17pt;text-align:left;background-color:#84ACD5} .footer {padding:3px;text-align:center;color:#FFFFFF;background-color:#720E5E;font-size:9pt;} a.footer:link {color:#FFFFFF;text-decoration:underline;} a.footer:visited {color:#FFFFFF;text-decoration:underline;} a.footer:active {color:#FF0000;text-decoration:underline;} a.footer:hover {color:#FFFFFF;text-decoration:underline;} </style> </head> <BODY> <div align="center"> <table border="0" width="700" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1" style="border-style: solid; border-width: 1px; border-color: #333333"> <tr> <td align="center" colspan="2" height="75" bgcolor="#720E5E"> <h1>Place Heading or Main Graphic Here</h1> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="130" valign="top" height="2" class="nav"><!--HIDDEN-TABLE-CELL--></td> <td width="570" rowspan="2" valign="top" class="bodypad" bgcolor="#E1EBF4"> <h2>Add A Heading Tag Here</h2> This website design's table structure allows search engine spiders to parse naturally down through the table hierarchy from the top first, then to the page's main content area, next to the navigation links (in this case, on the left), and finally to the bottom footer. <p>Although very basic, this template represents the foundation for the perfect search engine friendly table design. Simply right click to view, highlight/copy and save the HTML source for your own use.</p> <p>It's suggested that you use an external style sheet for the CSS inside the <head>.</p> <p>Feel free to further adjust the colors, table width, text sizes and CSS to personal taste.</p> <p>It might interest you to know that we've used this table design, as well as template #2, for many of our own websites and for cilents -- <b>VERY</b> successfully in the search engines. </td> </tr> <!--NAVIGATION--> <tr> <td width="130" valign="top" class="nav"> <br><a href="#">Navigation Link 1</a> <br><a href="#">Navigation Link 2</a> <br><a href="#">Navigation Link 3</a> </td> </tr> <!--FOOTER-NAV--> <tr> <td align="center" colspan="2" height="35" class="footer"> <a class="footer" href="#">Footer Link 1</a> <a class="footer" href="#">Footer Link 2</a> <a class="footer" href="#">Footer Link 3</a> <a class="footer" href="#">Footer Link 4</a> </td> </tr> </table> </div> <div align="center"> <p> <a href="http://validator.w3.org/#validate-by-input" target="_blank">Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional</a> </p> </div> </body> Code (markup):
I forgot to mention that many consider it an important aspect of SEO to configure your website so that it's "spider friendly" - that is, make it easy for search engine bots to parse your code and determine quickly what your website is about. Spiders will interpret phrases and keywords which appear higher up on the page as meaning the page is more relevant for those terms. Technically, spiders exhibit a degree of difficulty accessing content which is deeply embedded within 3 or more nested tables. A simple table structure that situates your important content high on top (of a table hierarchy) allows a spider easier access. The code exampled above places content "higher" in the code hierarchy by using a "hidden", or unused cell (above the left nav). This allows important text content to be found first -- before directing the path on to the navigation links next and to footers last. Essentially, if your site's important content is buried far beneath a mass of bloated HTML code, either by virtue of a complex table structure, or behind too much (unnecessary) code added indiscriminately by WYSIWYG editors, a search engine spider could ultimately give up, or time out - never finding, or at most, placing less importance on the page's main content. The task is to assist spiders and enable their easy access to your content, not inhibit them.
thanks so much for posting that. I'm working on a new site now and I'll be sure to make those changes
You can do all this with CSS and simply float your elements - this allows you to have a menu on the LHS while the code for same will appear after the markup for whatever appears on the RHS after the menu. CSS based layout also has the advantage of requiring less markup so your all-important text will normally appear higher up in your markup, and the spiders will see it earlier. CSS also makes life a whole lot easier if you want to change the layout - very often you can just change the CSS and leave the markup untouched in order to change the look and feel of your site.
That is really very good post,there is 1 more use if we have menu other side, if u put adsense code left side u can see lot of cange, your clicks increase
YOu should be considering the usage of <div>.. if you want your main content to be crawled beofre the Menus
In fact there are CSS layouts where, depending on the structure of the layout, you can start with the middle div content and then move over the left and/or right meny, being the first what the search engine spider disregard of the actual menu positiion.