How important is the HTML structure for on-page/on-site SEO?
-
To be more specific, say a page layout has Header, Body, Left Sidebar, Footer sections. Which layout from the following options is more SEO-friendly?
- Header > Body > Right Sidebar > Footer
- Body > Header > Right Sidebar > Footer
Does it make a big difference to code HTML so that the the copy of the body appears in front of all other sections when spiders crawl a website? Is it worth taking extra steps to make this happen?
I am asking this question because our site has a header navigation with a lot of dropdown menus. So I assume that this is "noise" for spiders as it pushes the main content of the page down.
Please bear in mind that the question is more geared towards how search engine see the page rather than how it appears to the end user as layout can be controlled by CSS.This question also assumes that all other on-site SEO best practices are followed for both options.
-
I agree with the other answers, but believe 100% your header should be above body content. The way I explain it to my clients is the header is a promise of what is to come. You wouldn't pick up a book without reading the title would you? Or know if it is in your own language?
The header is also the position to tell the SERP's what your entire site is about, look this site is about "such and such" with the "author tag so and so", written to answer "these questions" and you will find ALL that and more in the content.
Body above the header was a trick used years ago in SEO to force feed our intentions on the search engine, now we just politely introduce our page and let them browse the content.
-
Hi,
As irving mentioned in his answer, Google does crawl the whole page. However, from a HTML5 course I took, Google reads the HTML from top to bottom. Meaning if you have 1. Head > Body >Right Sidebar > Footer, Google will read your head first, then the body, then the right side bar and finally footer. If you have 2. Body > Header > Right Sidebar > Footer, they will read Header first. You get the point.
Therefore, it is suggested to have your more important content on the top of the HTML. But overall, Google will crawl the whole page.
-
Google reads the whole page, but it is said to put your content as high up in the code as possible. So if your header is a huge chunk of code, then putting the body above it sounds like a good idea.
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
-
My last site crawl shows over 700 404 errors all with void(0 added to the ends of my posts/pages.
Hello, My last site crawl shows over 700 404 errors all with void(0 added to the ends of my posts/pages. I have contacted my theme company but not sure what could have done this. Any ideas? The original posts/pages are still correct and working it just looks like it did duplicates and added void(0 to the end of each post/page. Questions: There is no way to undo this correct? Do I have to do a redirect on each of these? Will this hurt my rankings and domain authority? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks, Wade
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neverenoughmusic.com0 -
[Very Urgent] More 100 "/search/adult-site-keywords" Crawl errors under Search Console
I just opened my G Search Console and was shocked to see more than 150 Not Found errors under Crawl errors. Mine is a Wordpress site (it's consistently updated too): Here's how they show up: Example 1: URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword/page2.html/feed/rss2 Linked From: http://an-adult-image-hosting.com/search/adult-site-keyword/page2.html Example 2 (this surprised me the most when I looked at the linked from data): URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html/page/3/ Linked From: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html/page/2/ (this is showing as if it's from our own site) http://a-spammy-adult-site.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html Example 3: URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-3.html Linked From: http://an-adult-image-hosting.com/search/adult-site-keyword-3.html How do I address this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rmehta10 -
How do we decide which pages to index/de-index? Help for a 250k page site
At Siftery (siftery.com) we have about 250k pages, most of them reflected in our sitemap. Though after submitting a sitemap we started seeing an increase in the number of pages Google indexed, in the past few weeks progress has slowed to a crawl at about 80k pages, and in fact has been coming down very marginally. Due to the nature of the site, a lot of the pages on the site likely look very similar to search engines. We've also broken down our sitemap into an index, so we know that most of the indexation problems are coming from a particular type of page (company profiles). Given these facts below, what do you recommend we do? Should we de-index all of the pages that are not being picked up by the Google index (and are therefore likely seen as low quality)? There seems to be a school of thought that de-indexing "thin" pages improves the ranking potential of the indexed pages. We have plans for enriching and differentiating the pages that are being picked up as thin (Moz itself picks them up as 'duplicate' pages even though they're not. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggiaco-siftery0 -
Site Speed, is it worth it from a SEO point?
Hi, I understand a site which loads quickly is greater for the user but how does site speed affect rankings? I mean does Google log the speed pages load, the faster it loads the better the signal? So say I have a page which loads in 1.5sec would Google 'Rate' the site better if it loaded in say 0.8sec? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | followuk0 -
New Site Structure and 301s
We're moving towards a new site with new site structure. The old site has numerous backlinks to past events that won't be published on the new site. The new site will have about 60 future events that are currently active on the old site as well. I was wondering the best way to move forward with the 301 redirect plan. I was considering redirecting the old site structure to an "archive.ourdomain.co.uk" subdomain and redirecting the 60 or so active events to their equivalents on the new site. Would this be a sensible plan? Also for the active events, is there any difference between: _redirecting the old page to the archive page and then forwarding to the equivalent on the new page _ and redirecting the old page directly to the new page
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chanm790 -
WIll Splash Page Triggered Only for iPhones Hurt SEO
Background We are in the process of launching a website where ticket inventory and processing are handled by a third party. Our primary means of traffic generation (at least at first) will be through SEO traffic. One of the things that they require of us is a script that will detect people with an iPhone and, upon entering the site, display a page giving people the option to call for help or continue to the site. (see attached screenshot) We will still get credit for the transaction (tracked through the phone #) and they say that this increases conversion rate, so it is something that we would like to use, unless it will affect our ability to rank in mobile. Problem My concern is that we will be penalized by Google (or rank poorly in Mobile search) because the page that iPhone users (not iPad users) are served is hosted on a different domain and not optimized at all for the keywords people are searching for. This is obviously a non-issue if Google never sees the page, but I have heard that Google will emulate different devices when crawling pages. Question Can anyone provide any insight about this? I feel like we are adding value to customers by giving them the option to speak to customer support, but I'm afraid that Google will think we are cloaking or at best providing the same page to anyone entering with an iPhone. Here is a link to the soon-to-be-launched website:http://dev.concerttickets.com.vhost.zerolag.com/ -- so you can check it out on your iPhone. Is there a possibility that this could effect SEO traffic from other devices? Any suggests will or advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! EP1nA EP1nA EP1nA.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | highlyrelevant0 -
SEO Best Practices for Video Sites
What are the SEO Best Practices for video sites? Is there a guideline for this in SEOMOZ? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | merkal20050 -
One page wordpress site - what are the steps for SEO
Hello, I am launching 5 sites with keyword exact domains. I am developing the sites on wordpress as one page sales funnel sites. What do I need to do to optimize my sites? Really appreciate any bullet points or directions. Tks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brianmaher0