SE's indexing sidebar before content.

[mynameisjim]

I had one of my first blogs ever go 100% into supplemental so I decided to practice some techniques to get the pages out and whether by chance or due to my brilliance about 5 pages are going into the main index per day. Smart money is on coincidence.

Problem is, Google is indexing the sidebar first before the content on the page.

Anyone know what causes this or how to prevent it? I've heard it referenced before in other articles but no explanation as to what causes it.

In exchange for an answer I'm willing to trade my priceless collection of Lindsay Lohan memorabilia. She'll be dead soon so the value should skyrocket!

[balls_deep]

are you using description/content meta tags?

do you have a link to your page so i can see how the theme is calling your page?

Google has only indexed my sidebars if i put a blank page up and wait a day or two to add content to the page.

one of my blogs is catching alot of strings from the sidebar text, but the page is indexed with the correct description.

[Hammer]

Is it the left sidebar? Google indexes from the top of the page down. If it's the left sidebar, that content appears first on the page.

[mynameisjim]

The blog has a left sidebar so that maybe it.

But it seems today some of the newer pages are getting the content text right so maybe I need to wait a bit to see how things shake out once the whole site gets crawled again.

Before it would get the page title right but then the text under that in the SERPS would just be my sidebar links like pages, blogroll, etc.

[Hammer]

I did some experimenting with this page and ended up making sure to get the keywords I found most important into the left sidebar. Google also picked up the first words in that sidebar as the description.

http://www.hammeruncut.com/smart-people/

http://www.google.com/search?source=...=Google+Search

[King Porn]

Originally posted by Hammer
Is it the left sidebar? Google indexes from the top of the page down. If it's the left sidebar, that content appears first on the page.

Do you recommend having a right sidebar as opposed to a left one?

[Hammer]

Originally posted by King Porn
Do you recommend having a right sidebar as opposed to a left one?

Since most of us use the sidebars for links to other sites and advertising, neither of which we really care to have indexed, that would probably be a good idea, but...

All of my individual post pages get indexed and since there usually is no content in my left sidebar that is appropriate to the search, the text from the post itself is almost always used for the description rather than what appears in the left sidebar.

For example:

I wrote a post recently about rape fantasy vs reality and it's getting a good amount of Google traffic. I just checked my stats and saw this search string "watch rape fantasy". My post is #1 and the text for the description came from the post, not a sidebar. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...sy&btnG=Search

I think the sidebar problem is much more of an issue on the main page where there is no real focus to the posts and keywords that people are searching for appear in the left sidebar and since that is what appears first in the source code, it's picked up.

I think the final answer would depend entirely on what the blogger puts in their sidebars.

[gr8expectations]

saw this on SSGs site adultrevenuesources the other day might be helpful. Look at page 17 of the free ebook...but here is the gist.

Google WILL View all of the text in the left hand column Before The Body of the webpage. This
isn't good for us, because we want Google to actually read our content first!
How can you get around this? I've come up with a neat little trick that will ensure that Google
reads the actual body of your webpage before the left hand column containing your
navigational links.
Here is what you need to do:
Rather than creating a table that looks like this, which is essentially what the website above
looks like...
You should create a table that looks like this:
By doing this, Google will read the top left hand row/column first (This is labeled "empty
column") BUT will see that it is empty, so it will then read the body text of your webpage
and then read the 2nd left hand row/column which contains your navigational links!

obviously with out the graphics it doesn't make a whole lot of sense but check out page 17 of the pdf. Tinkering with your blog theme might be a pain in the ass, but this might be a solution. Just thought I'd offer what I read.

[gr8expectations]

Follow up, looks like the same is happening to my new blog. strange though when I do a site search I see indexed pages and it is showing my list of recent posts, which I had in the sidebar on the right. I have now moved both sidebars right, hope it straightens out.

[fpanko]

All search engines and web browser read to content of your site in the order it is writtin in the code.
top to bottom
left to right.

If your good at css, you can write your code like a term-paper. As organized as possible. Then use css to arrange the elements on your page.

You can also let google know what you page is about by using 1 H1 tag. The follow it with a paragraph. The h1 will take priority over other text and elements in the page. This is where you want some keywords.

[Hammer]

Originally posted by gr8expectations
Follow up, looks like the same is happening to my new blog. strange though when I do a site search I see indexed pages and it is showing my list of recent posts, which I had in the sidebar on the right. I have now moved both sidebars right, hope it straightens out.

Remember that the description that Google shows will have something to do with the keywords someone is looking for. If there is no text in the left sidebar or body that has the keywords but the right sidebar does, that's where Google will take the text from.

p.s. It was great to finally meet you. I'm glad you got a chance to make it to Cybernet.

[gr8expectations]

Originally posted by fpanko
All search engines and web browser read to content of your site in the order it is writtin in the code.
top to bottom
left to right.

If your good at css, you can write your code like a term-paper. As organized as possible. Then use css to arrange the elements on your page.

After doing a site search and seeing all of my posts indexed the same, sidebar stuff first I took a hard look at this. I am running a 3 column blog, and although I moved both sidebars to the right of the page, sidebars were still leading every post. Well duh, the index.php file was calling them right after the header. When looking at page source, all sidebar content came before posts .

I moved the php includes to just before the call for footer. Guess what, I didn't break anything and now the sidebar stuff is where it should be, at the bottom, below my content.

Hopefully this will remedy this situation.

There are some really great blog themes out there, not all of them are written so well. I absolutely love the theme I am using, but it is missing out on many SEO goodies.

I'll post here as soon as I see any change in google. Off to edit my single post pages, archives, page templates, etc.

[mynameisjim]

Gr8expectations, I think this is what I was looking for. The way the PHP pulls the body before the sidebar.

I might try this as well.

[gr8expectations]

mine was pulling the sidebar(s) first, so I moved them below my content. Not sure it will make a big difference in the grand scheme of things, I still get SE hits for text in posts, but I usually try to lead with KW rich sentences, and I want the SE's to encounter that before sidebar links.

[fpanko]

Another thing to consider.

If you use a meta description tag, Search engines will usually show this text instead of the 1st text is comes across on the page.


When this isn't found, the next thing that most fall to is a the H1 and text that imediately follows it.

[gr8expectations]

Originally posted by fpanko
Another thing to consider.

If you use a meta description tag, Search engines will usually show this text instead of the 1st text is comes across on the page.


When this isn't found, the next thing that most fall to is a the H1 and text that imediately follows it.

Yup you called it.

Update here, most recent post just indexed without sidebar jumble. So the fix worked, only now it has blog title and description before post content. Guess I need to hook up that head-meta-description plugin and start writing descriptions.

Still, a step in the right direction I suppose.

What I have learned from all of this: Just cause your theme looks cool as hell doesn't make it a good theme. If you are in love with a theme, Take a close look at how it works and make fixes before building site.