Does the positioning of the text on a webpage matter for search engines?
-
Does the positioning of the text on a webpage matter for search engines?
Do you need to place the text at the upperside of a webpage or is at the bottom also a good option?
-
Dear all,
thanks for replying. Is it a good idea to use jquery sliders on the top of your page to still get all your text above the fold and score in search engines?
for example:
http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/after-slider.jpg is much better
than
http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/before-slider1-310x1024.jpg
??
Thanks again!
-
Make sure that you're doing all you can to categorize your content. H1/H2/H3, paragraph tags, etc. I can't say exactly how they do it, but from experience it appears that crawlers are pretty good about judging where your main messages are placed. And of course, as Matt Cutts has explicity said again and again, good content trumps SEO. Not sure I believe him 100% though.
-
Yeah, it's in situations like this that I find it a bit beguiling to be told to build for humans. If Google were as smart as humans, then I would agree but until then it seems to be a case of "build for both". Where do we draw the line between building for Google's computer like flaws and building to manipulate rankings........
-
I know what you mean.
I spend a lot of time doing stuff for google that I would not do otherwise.
-
This aspect has been exercising my brain recently. It bothers me slightly that Google seems to treat "content" as synonymous with "text". This create real problems for many e-commerce sites where people are not visiting to read......they want to "see" and then buy.
One of my websites sells printed greetings cards. The actual board, size etc of cards is pretty uniform across our range so the cards really only differ by how they look. Images are therefore hugely important and tell the user pretty much everything they need to know about the card. They are the number one important aspect for that product. Therefore to create the best user experience the images need to be number one priority. However if I want Google to love my page and return it for queries relating to that card then I need to provide a textual description. Ideally prominently on the page (since the Page Layout Algo etc). But I know humans don't need that explanation because everything they need to know is contained in the image information. So I am then forced to write a description not for my users but for Google. I know we are supposed to build sites for people not engines but I can't see any other way of having Google love my page except to write something pretty much exclusively for Google.
Sorry for the slightly "ranting" nature of this but it does bother me. Not only do I have to write descriptions for Google (unique for each card) but now I need to make them more prominent in the misguided belief that humans want them!
Gary
-
I think that the position can be highly significant.
What if the relevant text is in a paragraph in the body of an article. That should be more significant than text in the footer.
And, wouldn't you think that a link in the top navigation would be more significant than a link in the footer?
-
Hi,
The position of (main) text on the page doesn't affect the indexing or crawling of that page. From a user's standpoint, you probably want to position the text higher on the web page to make it easier to read. When it comes to choosing the position, I'd go with what makes the most sense for the overall design of your site.
If you meant the location of the text inside the HTML of the page, I don't think that really matters. Good coding practices would keep the HTML as simplistic as possible and put the content in a logical location. But that is more about coding practices, not SEO; I've seen sites with really sloppy HTML get crawled and indexed.
Hope that helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Will shortening down the amount of text on my pages affect it's SEO performance?
My website has several pages with a lot of text that becomes pretty boring. I'm looking at shortening down the amount of copy on each page but then within the updated, shortened copy, integrating more target keywords naturally. Will shortening down the current copy have a negative effect on my SEO performance?
On-Page Optimization | | Liquid20150 -
Improving the search function on my site...
Hi all, The search function on my site is pretty bad... it basically lists every single product for any search query. Has anyone got experience integrating a 3rd party tool such as Google Custom Search or Pardot and if so which would you recommend? Alternatively, any tips on improving/ creating rules for site search would be appreciated. https://www.boardwarehouse.co.uk/ Thanks, Alick
On-Page Optimization | | Alick3000 -
If Google still shows my old title in the search results then there is no way my title change could have changed my ranking yet right?
If Google still shows my old title in the search results then there is no way my title change could have changed my ranking yet right? In other words if I changed from TItleA to TitleB but search results and cache still show TitleA then any SERP drops or increases would still be entirely based on titleA right? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Rezo0 -
How can i change my landing page title in search engines?
Hi SEO folks, Please help! I've changed my home page title 30 days ago, but my Google search results is still showing the old one! Why is that happening? can I've a brief explanation please so i can learn. thanks a million cRnPa6d
On-Page Optimization | | aptustelecom0 -
Page content length...does it matter?
As I begin developing my website's content, does it matter how long or short the actual text found in the is? I heard someone say before "a minimum of 250 words", but is that true? If so, what is the maximum length I should use?
On-Page Optimization | | wlw20090 -
We have 5 postions on page 2 in a google search, but none on page 1\. How can we fix this?
For one of our most important key phrases we have 5 listings on page 2 but none on page 1. We are an ecommerce company, the key phrase we're trying for is a Top Level Category name for us, so the 5 links we have on googles second page for the key phrase (in order) are the appropriate top level category page, the sites home page and than three sub categories of that top level category. So while that all makes sense, can't we convince google to concentrate all that link power/juice into just the top level category page? Hopefully bumping it to first page rank? The 5 ranks are 11-15
On-Page Optimization | | absoauto0 -
How to properly handle these search results pages
I work with Afternic.com and they are restructuring their website. The current search results pages generate tons of duplicate content, but it's not so clear to me what the best solution. Navigation links to all of these pages which are exactly the same and do not generate content on the specific url indicated. The results all display on variations of the url names.php http://www.afternic.com/names.php?feat=1 http://www.afternic.com/names.php?cls=1 Then they have this page with categories: http://www.afternic.com/categories.php And when you select a category, it generates sort results of names.php Now because there is no real content on names.php I'm wondering if all these url variations ought to have a rel canonical tag for names.php or if they should be blocked. If blocked, it seems we're stuck with a page that doesn't display any content. Thanks for any suggestions.
On-Page Optimization | | cakelady0 -
Webpage with around 200+ inter links per page
HI, I have a client that I recently took on and I run a SEOmoz crawl on the website and a minor error was that .. 1. web pages have more than 200+ interlinks, reason for this is becuase the client offers a service to every place in the world and then has links to contact us/about us etc those kind of pages. is this something we need to strongly avoid? 2. The title tags are all over the suggested amount by 1/2 letters. - again is this really bad?
On-Page Optimization | | Prestige-SEO0