Optimizing Web Site Configuration
When people design web sites, we often most usually think about the aesthetics. As long as it looks good, frankly, I don’t care what goes on the left and right parts of the layout. However, if you plan to optimize your web site completely and would want it to be search engine friendly, there’s actually a web site configuration to follow. That configuration would be: header, menu(s), content, sidebar(s) and finally, footer. It doesn’t mean you always have to follow this positioning. This is used if and only if, you are taking pains to completely optimize your sites for search engines.
The reason for this isn’t exactly to rank higher in the SERPs. No, not at all. Here are a couple of reasons why the header, menu(s), content, sidebar(s) and footer configuration matters:
1. Spidering Issues
Despite the fact that spiders index your pages, they reach a limit when they get a part of the page and stop indexing. You want to make sure search engine bots get to index your content and your links.
2. Display Issues
Some browsers, like text-only readers, prefer this semantic markup of web pages. This type of display also seems to be the preference of PDAs and mobile phones.
3. Loading Issues
Using the above configuration, web pages tend to load easily. This is simply way to reach a wider audience — dial-up users for example. When loading is easy as 1-2-3, expect people to come back for seconds…and thirds too.
Now, although this gesture by itself might not help increase your ranking in the SERPs, its effects might. Faster loading time and having no display issues for example, could get people to link back to you which could then increase your rankings. Everything snowballs from little things you do.
