Can layout be a problem in getting high ranks???

[largeformatprint]

We have our website largeformat-print.co.uk related to banners, display stands, and other promotional materials. We have been doing various activities to get our keywords ranked high on the search engines, but we are not getting expected results thus We asked a seo consultant regarding our website design, he said that there is a problem in our design, and you can’t achieve ranks in your keywords until you change your layout. Is this due to our layout? Please suggest.

[brittney marie]

I don't think website should be a problem when your website is not getting ranked...

[faysal969]

I think website lay out is not a great fact for ranking well in search engine.

Good quality content, meta data and meta keywords are great factor.

[Thomas De]

I think, design can be a problem for your rankings if:

- the site loads too slow, because of grappy code or to many pictures with big file sizes

-you use a design, which is used on many spam sites too.

[largeformatprint]

Originally Posted by Thomas De

I think, design can be a problem for your rankings if:

- the site loads too slow, because of grappy code or to many pictures with big file sizes

-you use a design, which is used on many spam sites too.

What should i do then?? actually i cannot change my design.... please suggest me something.......

[Derek S]

not a huge issue but if you are picky like I am it is an issue. google reads your page from a code perspective, so if your main content is in the middle of your page but it is really the 3rd table in your code - google will crawl two tables before it gets to your H1 tag... a big deal for on-page SEO

I never worry about on page other than title tags and keyword density. Off-page factors should be your main concern.

[largeformatprint]

Originally Posted by Derek S

not a huge issue but if you are picky like I am it is an issue. google reads your page from a code perspective, so if your main content is in the middle of your page but it is really the 3rd table in your code - google will crawl two tables before it gets to your H1 tag... a big deal for on-page SEO

I never worry about on page other than title tags and keyword density. Off-page factors should be your main concern.

Ok thnx for the info.... i just want to ask you one more thing about cache problem. My website do not get cached on regular basis. Is this because of same reason.?? Please suggest me something more.

[markowe]

I have been taught that layout CAN be an factor. If web robots perceive that there is a huge amount of information BEFORE the main content, they may devalue the main content. I am not sure how true that is, but good practice says keep the content above your main content to a minimum, and ensure any sidebars are AFTER your centre column in the code. That can easily be done in CSS. Then almost the first thing Googlebot sees in the HTML body is your main content.

About getting cached (you mean by Google?), the simple solution is to update frequently and with fresh content. Why would Google keep caching if nothing has changed on the page? Though if you aren't frequently updating why does it matter whether your page is cached anyway?

If you ARE updating frequently you may need to make changes in your sitemap to tell Google to crawl more often, though Google doesn't have to listen to you :/