How to code Source Ordered Content?

Marketing
1

Hi,
Does anyone know any good tutorials for coding source ordered content (SOC)? For example, is it best to have navigation above the body content in the source code? How can I reorder my code so that:

Header
Navigation
Body
Footer

becomes:

Body
Navigation
Header
Footer

What are your experienced of SOC?
Thanks

2

You’ve posted this in the “Search Engine Optimisation” forum.
In terms of SEO, it makes pretty much no difference whether the content comes before or after the boilerplate (eg header, navigation). Unless your page is so big that you are in danger of content dropping off the end of what search engines will index (pretty unlikely, you’d need more than 500KB of HTML minimum), they aren’t going to be bothered either way. Googlebot is smart enough to figure out which bits of your site are navigation and which bits are content, and it isn’t going to arbitrarily penalise you for having the navigation before the content.

Bolton - If you want to have the topic moved to the “Web Design” or more particularly “Accessibility” forum to get a different perspective, click the red flag on your message and ask to have the thread moved.

3

Hi Stevie,
Looking back at my post I wasnt clear enough. My question was in regards to SEO. For SEO reasons, it helps (so Ive been told) to have good quality content at the top of the page so Googlebot can quickly make sense of what the page is about. I know its bad for Googlebot to have to wade through loads of code before it gets to some keyword-rich text. Whether its good for Googlebot to first come across the navigation which it can easily spider through to other pages, or whether its better for Googlebot to come across keyword-rich text first I dont know.

So from an SEO angle, does it make a difference to code in a SOC way? And if so, does anyone know any good tutorials for doing this?
Thanks

4

As I said, from an SEO point of view, it is pretty irrelevant. Yes, Googlebot does seem to give more weight to words appearing near the top of the page, but it is also smart enough to know the difference between content and navigation, so having your navigation come before the content won’t hurt you in terms of SEO.