Rearranging page code & advanced CSS techniques to improve SEO
Sep 8, 02:37 PM | Comment [1]I was conducting a review of some XHTML and CSS templates for a client recently when I came across an interesting SEO concept that I hadn’t heard of before. At first I was skeptical (and I still am a little), but upon closer inspection I started thinking that there could be something it it. Not only in terms of SEO, but accessibility too. The articles I found describing this technique date back to 2004/5 and the fact that I’ve not found anything more recent on the subject just further fuels my skepticism. Anyway – I thought I’d post my discovery here and see what the wider web design world had to comment…
So what is it? Well, the idea is this: Rather than structuring your HTML in the usual order of header/navigation, content and footer, you build the pages such that the main content appears first, with the navigation and footer underneath. Then, using CSS to style the page you pull the navigation/header back up to appear above the content when viewed in a browser.
The articles I found describing the technique promote the idea that doing this will raise the relevance of your page within search engine rankings since it’s believed that some spiders only read the first few characters, or give more weight to content appearing towards the top of a page. You can see the articles here:
Darebin libraries website
Jun 13, 03:35 PM CommentHaving experienced many online offerings from local governments and local councils in the past, as well as having worked for a few, I had pretty much resigned myself to accepting that most are going to be rubbish in terms of antiquated code using tables for layout and inline styles, bad interface design, little or no regard for usability or accessibility and, more often than not containing outdated content.
Whatever the reasons for this, be it that the website is perhaps considered a low priority, that there’s no dedicated resource allocated to the website or that it’s simply too hard to get people to agree to a redesign, the sites’ users seem destined to lose-out.
Target accessibility lawsuit given class action
Oct 9, 01:27 PM CommentThe legal case against Target in the US has been in the headlines again this week as a federal judge in has just granted “class action status” to the lawsuit.
Like many in the web industry, I have been aware of this case since it first came to light back in early 2006 (when a 24-year-old student, along with the American National Federation for the Blind filed the suit, alleging the Target Corporation is breaking the law by failing to make its website accessible and usable for the blind), but I wasn’t too clear on what this recent “class action status” meant, and what the ramifications might be.