True Or False About Menus

[TCH-Thomas]

Long long time ago I think I read (but not sure) in this forum that a menu should be placed to the right on page. I think it had something to do with search engine stuff.

True or false?

If true, what are the benefits and will I loose big time if menu is placed somewhere else?

[TCH-Andy]

The reason for that was that generally the search egines read the HTML from top to bottom. And using good old fashioned HTML, then if you put the menu on the right - you have all your content first (rather than the links). This is hence a lot better in the search engines (they assume the important stuff is at the top.

 

If you start using CSS, then of course you can put the content at the end of the HTML, but still display it on the left hand side

[TCH-Thomas]

But if placing to the left (in html), there is still a chance that search engines will see me even if I might not be placed as number one?

[TCH-Andy]

Hi,

 

Yes, the search engines would still rank your site - just potentially, not as high.

[TCH-Thomas]

Thanks Andy

[Berlie]

I always try to make sure the first text the search engine would see is something worth them indexing. Like a "welcome to such and such" with a description of the site. Often this is the text that will be displayed as the description of your site in a search engine, not all of them use the meta tag description that you supply.

[Deverill]

They are both right, Thomas.

 

The search engine ranking improvement by putting content first is probably not big now days but as Berlie said, they often use the first thing they see to describe your site so you'll want it to be good.

 

Use CSS and you can put it anywhere you want and not have to worry about it.

[TCH-Thomas]

Use CSS and you can put it anywhere you want and not have to worry about it.

I cant in CSB as far as I know.

 

Why I wonder all this is because I am working on Jessicas site (marveassistans.se) which have an ad out now for hiring people and I expect it will have some visitors. Then I figured how can I make it SE-friendly in layout I mean, so the visitors keeps finding it even if no ad is out.

[TCH-Don]

You can still use a table.

Put the content at the left,

and the menu at the right.

[TCH-Thomas]

Yes I know Don

Its just that it looks so weird to have content to left and menu to right.

So that is why I asked how important it is to have menu to the right.

[Deverill]

My opinion, and that is all that it is, is that the search engines can handle bigger and more complex pages now than ever before and should be able to index your site wherever the menu is unless it's huge and messy.

[Nicholas Naime]

More and more sources say that your actual rank depends on how many pages link to your site. This is not to suggest that you should not optimize your site for web crawlers. Google uses the phrase you have in your Description meta tag; some other search engines do so, as well. But not all of them. It also depends on how much a particular search engine query matches the description.

 

Another important thing to know is that there are literally billions of pages on the Internet. Web crawling bots devote only so much time to indexing your page. If the page itself is not optimized (contains too much unnecessary code as opposed to actual content), chances are crawlers will give up before indexing it.

 

The best way to get higher rankings is to have as many people provide link to your web site as possible. At the same time, links from higher-rated pages weigh more than those from obscure home pages.

 

Avoid submitting your link to "link farms." Most web crawlers are aware of those, and will effectively lower your page rank.

 

I know it sounds tricky, but that's because it is. Ten years ago, web crawlers were much more forgiving. Today, the situation is different because of billions of web pages that exist.