With some basic HTML tweaking webpages can be made more Search Engine Friendly i.e more relevant in the eyes of a Search Engine, this articles teaches you how to do just that.
Suppose you have a website with 2 sections,
1. The Left Section : Which usually contains menu items, ads, some promotional offers etc.
2. The Main Content Area : Which contains the main textual content of the website.
Below is the basic template.
LEFT SECTION
ITEM1
ITEM2
ITEM3
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HTML used for the sample above.
<table width="80%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td>
<b>LEFT SECTION</b><br>
ITEM1<br>
ITEM2<br>
ITEM3<br>
</td>
<td bgcolor="#D9BBBB" rowspan="2" valign="top">
Main Body
</td>
</tr>
</table>
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Notice, the content of The Left Section appears above The Main Content Area in the source, a Search Engine may thus give more importance / preference to left section of your webpage then your actual content area.
The above structure can be improved for search engine optimization purposes.
The 'Rowspan' attribute of the <td> can be used to solve the above problem.
Using rowspan=2 divide the page into two rows, put The Main Content text in the first row, above the Left section, which should be put in the second row.
Optimized HTML Structure
<table width="80%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td height="1">
</td>
<td bgcolor="#D9BBBB" rowspan="2" valign="top">
Main Body
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<b>LEFT SECTION</b><br>
ITEM1<br>
ITEM2<br>
ITEM3<br>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
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Optimized Output
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LEFT SECTION
ITEM1
ITEM2
ITEM3
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