Subscribe to RSS feed
Subscribe to email updatesIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Countless pages have been written on how the most important content on a page should also appear first in the HTML markup. This is good for readers with slow connections, but has also been thought to help search engine optimization.
With the search engines growing more intelligent by the day, this area of search engine optimization has become all but unnecessary. All the major search engines are able to figure out which part of the document is the main content, so the order will usually have little effect. As usual, Google is especially good at this.
That does not mean that you should not optimize content order, though. The same point about slow connections is still valid, though most Internet connections are faster nowadays. Having a sidebar with a lot of ads load before the main content will still hurt some users, so you should avoid it.
You should probably not spend too much time thinking about content order, but if you know your HTML you really have no excuse not to help your visitors by placing the main content first in the markup. If that helps some search engine find your content, you should see that as a bonus.
by Sutocu | February 26, 2008 
Thanks for pointing this out:
“You should probably not spend too much time thinking about content order, but if you know your HTML you really have no excuse not to help your visitors by placing the main content first in the markup.”
It seems obvious, but then, how many of us miss the obvious all too often?
Placement of orderly content in the website is very important, though Search Engine can find our main content wheresoever it has been placed but from the user point of view our content should be placed orderly as to make it user friendly.
Thanks for the post.
Placement of your content in an orderly way is not only important for the search engines but also for those who are reading it.
No good if your content is hidden out of the way
Great site by the way
Rich
I’m ordering all my contents and I personally hate heavy side bars. I was working on SEO for a while but I’m little bit confused about SEM. I’m not clear about that. Have to work on it.
I think ordering contents for your website is necessary. Not just for search engine optimization but also for your readers. A user friendly website drives more readers.
Google always starts reading a site from the left side and sidebars then at the center. Ordering the content is good though.
That’s one major advantage to using CSS. You can put your content portions higher in the html and even before the navigation for your page, and then use the CSS to place it in the right position when the page gets rendered. This is a lot harder (almost impossible ) to do when you are writing using a table design.
Great Blog, I will learn a lot from here. I will keep on reading it, thanks for the informations, really helpful. ^_^
Little tricks like ordering content typically provides very little benefit. To truly do well in the search engines one needs a better strategy.
That’s good to know since I sometimes worry about SEO on new websites.
Great info. I’ve been wondering the same thing about SEO on those new websites. I’m trying to start a blog so this really helps. Thanks again for posting
Thanks for sharing this info… the thing about SEO is that it helps those who fully understand its capabilities to increase their chances of being seen and making their hard work pay off
Nice tip man…
If you have your main keywords in the title of your page and in the meta tags it should not be hard for the search engines to find your main content.
thanks ..
usefull tip ..
I would disagree that the content order in HTML source is not important anymore. Think of the mobile device users who usually are presented with a stripped down CSS version of your website, which means that HTML structure is all they actually see. If the main content area is not at the top, users have to scroll long way through the secondary content. Its not about slow connections for desktop/laptop users, but the overall accessibility of the content.
good seo tip , thanks!
SEO is really important if you want more visits from google. Good article! Thanks for the tips!
If you can order your content why not ? Is just about creating some rules and follow them ? Apply this to new content and cost nothing, even it’s for little benefit. Every tiny little bit helps …