CSS Float Top Left Image not displaying

[JustInsulation]

Using CSS/HTML in Dreamweaver CC, I am trying to display a SEO friendly matrix of six images wide by three deep on the Home Page, but cannot get the first (top left) image to display consistently.

The page appears correctly in Dreamweaver Design View, but not in the Live View. Equally it works fine in Safari, but not in Firefox nor I.E.

I seem to have tried every CSS variation to resolve this issue, without success. Can someone stear me in the right direction, please?

The relevant HTML Code ...

Celotex PL4050 - 62.5mm insulated wallboard from £11.96 per m² / £34.45 per board

SuperFoil SF19 40mm Multi-foil Roll from £5.23 per m² / £98.00 per 18.75 m² Roll

Celotex GA4000 General application Rigid PIR from £8.56 per m² / £24.66 per board

Rockwool Full-fill 75mm Cavity Wall Slabs from £3.51 per m² / £1.92 per slab

Knauf Earthwool 270mm Loft Roll 44 Combi-Cut from £3.80 per m² / £22.51 per 9.93 m² Roll

Kingspan Kooltherm K8 75mm Cavity Wall Boards from £16.26 per m² / £8.79 per board

Knauf Earthwool 170mm Combi-cut Loft Roll 44 from £3.16 per m² / £25.34 per 8 m² Roll

Kingspan Kooltherm K7 Rigid Phenolic Foam - 75mm £13.91 per m² / £40.05 per board

...

The associated CSS code ...

#popular {
width: 1050px;
height: 800px;
overflow: hidden;
width: auto;
height: auto;
}
#product1 {
background-image: url(../007-graphics/popular/01-prod.png);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
width: 150px;
height: 265px;
margin-left: 24px;
float: left;
overflow: auto;
clear: left;
}
#product2 {
background-image: url(../007-graphics/popular/02-prod.png);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
width: 150px;
height: 265px;
margin-left: 10px;
float: left;
opacity: 0.85;
}
#product3 {
background-image: url(../007-graphics/popular/03-prod.png);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
width: 150px;
height: 265px;
margin-left: 10px;
float: left;
max-height: 275px;
opacity: 0.85;
}
#product4 {
background-image: url(../007-graphics/popular/04-prod.png);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
width: 150px;
height: 265px;
margin-left: 10px;
float: left;
max-height: 275px;
}
#product5 {
background-image: url(../007-graphics/popular/05-prod.png);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
width: 150px;
height: 265px;
margin-left: 10px;
float: left;
max-height: 275px;
opacity: 0.85;
}
#product6 {
background-image: url(../007-graphics/popular/06-prod.png);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
width: 150px;
height: 265px;
margin-left: 10px;
float: left;
max-height: 275px;
opacity: 0.85;
}
#product7 {
clear: both;
background-image: url(../007-graphics/popular/07-prod.png);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
width: 150px;
height: 265px;
margin-left: 24px;
float: left;
max-height: 275px;
opacity: 0.85;
}
#product8 {
background-image: url(../007-graphics/popular/08-prod.png);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
width: 150px;
height: 265px;
margin-left: 10px;
float: left;
max-height: 275px;
}
#product9 {
background-image: url(../007-graphics/popular/09-prod.png);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
width: 150px;
height: 265px;
margin-left: 10px;
float: left;
max-height: 275px;
opacity: 0.85;
} ...

The complete code is located at - www.just-insulation.com/index.html

[JustInsulation]

G'day Jesse,

I have added the following code to my .htaccess file ...

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.index.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://www.just-insulation.com/$1 [R=301,L]

All attempts to add a similar code to redirect in the other direction results in the home page not loading, or the creation of an infinite loop.

Open Site Explorer still returns ...
www.just-insulation.com a PA of 32 and 
www.just-insulation.com/index.html a PA of 15

The thought of all this lost link juice is making me really thirsty.

[jesse-landry]

Yes exactly. Assuming you're on an Apache server, of course.

Just to clarify, I ran both URLs through Open Site Explorer and sure enough two different Page Authorities returned:

www.just-insulation.com has a PA of 32

www.just-insulation.com/index.html has a PA of 15

Showing that in fact your link juice is splitting there when ideally you will want it combined.

[JustInsulation]

Should I understand that you are proposing that I use the .htaccess file to create a server side redirect?

[jesse-landry]

No problem.

While it is good you have the canonical tag present, you should still redirect one to the other. The canonical tag will prevent any duplicate content issues with your site so at least you don't have to worry about that. But not redirecting can still have some unwanted effects on your page.

Basically it can split your PR/PA between two URLs. If somebody links to yourdomain.com and another somebody links to yourdomain.com/index.html these two links are now receiving juice separately. The canonical tag does not carry link juice. That is why you want to 301 the index.html page to your root domain. Your hosting provider should be able to do this easily for you, or go ahead and google it if you have your own server. (the process changes based on whether you're hosting via Apache servers or IIS servers.)

I would still focus on getting that redirected. It'll save you headaches in the future.

Good luck!

[JustInsulation]

Thanks again for your input, Jesse.

Your 301 Redirect has me worried. We presently have the canonical statement on our home page ...  - and thought that this was the correct way to prioritise http://www.just-insulation.com over http://www.just-insulation.com/index.com . Also, the weekly Moz Campaign Crawl Diagnostics is not showing any errors. Can you elaborate on the best method to resolve this issue?

I continue to search for an appropriate SEO friendly Add-in that will allow me to frequently change the front page images / hyperlinks / descriptions / etcetera. However, I certainly do take your advice on board.

Many thanks.

[jesse-landry]

Bravo, sir! May I make one more SEO related quick-suggestion:

Make sure you redirect your page with a 301 to avoid duplicate content. Right now you have two addresses (www.domain.com and www.domain.com/index.html) displaying the same content. These will both be indexed and should be redirected.

Also from a usability standpoint I feel like the images should be clickable... But there are a ton of these little nit-picky changes I'll leave to you

You might be kind of shooting yourself in the foot with the whole image name thing. You don't have alt tags or image names and that can affect your on-site optimization. However you won't rank for every product on one page anyway so in your case it might not matter terribly. Still I'd raise an eyebrow if it were my page..

Anyway good luck!

[JustInsulation]

Greetings Jesse,

Thanks for the feedback. It seems that once I removed the drop shadows from the images, the situation resolved itself. Clearly there was a sizing issue with one or more of the images that was throwing the CSS float out of kilter.

The reason that I named the images prod-1, prod-2, prod-3, was to semi-automate future image changes. As these are background images, populated through CSS, rather then HTML, I understood that they had no influence on SEO.

Sorry about your headache, and 'Yes', you were quite right that the 'Happy Monkey' font was totally over the top! That came about because of my mistake in the CSS Links, and has since been resolved.

I have been trying to identify a jQuery Gallery or Lightbox to use instead of CSS, but without luck so far.

Again, my thanks for your critique.

[JustInsulation]

Hi there Maximise,

Thank you for the advice. The problem is now solved thanks to the responses to my post.

It seems, that (following Jesse's critique) when I removed the drop shadows from the images, the situation resolved itself. I can only imagine that the Drop Shadows were effecting the image size, and this impacted upon the CSS Float mechanism.

Anyway, thanks again.

[Maximise]

Thanks!

It relates to elements that are floated. Options are left, right, both or none. So if you have "clear:left" then this element can not have any floated elements to it's left and would therefore be bumped to the next line.

[jesse-landry]

Ha! Yeah that'll do it. Nicely done Maximise.

As a side, what does the clear: operator do in CSS?

[Maximise]

The product 1 image doesn't seem to exist. Are you sure you don't have it cached in some browsers? Follow this link and press F5 to see if it loads - it doesn't for me.

http://www.just-insulation.com/007-graphics/popular/01-prod.png

[jesse-landry]

Couple things here --

First off I'm not sure you'll get the best coding advice here on the moz forums.. Although I know there are some people here who are good at it for sure. You may be better off with these types of questions at stackoverflow.com (just a thought)

Moz will give you awesome marketing/optimization tips though. For example, I might say to you "hey why are your images titled '09-prod.png' that isn't doing anything for your optimization..." Or I might say "oof. No offense but that site kinda gives me a headache. See if you can make it less busy and scale that drop shadow down... Is that comic sans?? no."

But also to answer your question, my best bet would be that your first product definition in the CSS has a "clear:left" operator assigned to it. That is most likely why it is not displaying. Try removing that.

Hope this helps!