Advice on display this content on my page for search engines

[ClaireH-184886]

Hi, my website http://www.in2town.co.uk/Holiday-News is about bringing travel and holiday news to our readers of our lifestyle magazine but i am having problems at the moment with the layout.

What i mean by this is, i have written content on the page as an introduction so google knows what this section of the site is about but to be honest it looks rubbish with having the introduction there and i would like to know if i am doing the right thing by having the content there for google to know what my site is about.

I have tried taking it away and noticed i dropped in the rankings and when i have put it back up i go up in the rankings, can anyone please give me some advice over this issue

[EricaMcGillivray]

You have to find the right balance for your site and what works for both users and rankings. When thinking about text for your website header to explain who you are, you'll want to think of it as a short blurb. I wouldn't write more than 150 words and be very precise in what you want to rank and tell your users. Less text means less of a big block and might ease a lot of your aesthetic concerns. As Mark Twain said, if I had more time I would have written a shorter letter.

[ClaireH-184886]

here is a site i am working on http://www.cheapflightsgatwick.com/ which is a main travel site which i hope to have finished in the next couple of weeks, and what i have done with this as an experiment is, to have the logo and the main menu shown with a gap.

and what i was thinking was, to have an introduction in there in text format for google and for my users but i do not know if this would be good or not. i do not know if this would look nice or look rubbish.

the problem i have with the in2town one and this one, is finding the space to put the text to let people know what it is and to let google know what it is. before this with the in2town, i have a big space with the writing to show both google and the user what the site is about but it looked out of the place and after looking at other magazines like the sun and female first and digital spy who do not have any content showing, i decided to remove it, so you can see my problem.

when i have a big space on the above site cheap flights gatwick and had information about the site, google had it at number four and five but now when i have removed that i am about number 49, so i am struggling, because i want google to have my site in the top of the search engines but i do not want it to look rubbish

[EricaMcGillivray]

You should have a mix of both. Searchbots cannot "see" images (which is why you give them alt tags to help.) Some of your customers are visual learners and will benefit greatly from your images, and others will be text readers and need text. If you don't say what your company does, it makes it extremely confusing for both customers and searchbots. Don't assume people know what your business is about.

[ClaireH-184886]

so are you saying that i just have information in text format in the header position about the site or should i use graphics/

[EricaMcGillivray]

So you're definitely going to lose rankings for your major keywords if you take away the information that explains what your site is about. You should work to make this text both friendly for your users and Google's bots. I'd work with a graphic designer to put it somewhere else, say nearer to your header. And I'd work on optimizing what you want to say about the company.