Re-Design Website For Better Rankings?

[rs07258]

Hello All,

I have been reading a lot about a websites design lately as it relates to rankings in the search engines. Many professionals suggest that the bulk of your keyword rich page content should be as close to the top of your HTML code as possible. My current design has the navigation at the top with a bunch of links, a search bar, and my logo. I have already moved my javascript and css to separate files. Do you think it would be wise to re-design my site and push my content above the navigation within the HTML code? Reason I ask, is because I have a rather large website and a re-design would take a few days. I wanted to see if it would be worth the effort. I took a major hit in rankings recently, so I would like to do anything possible to climb back up.

Thanks for your help.

- Ralph

[weslinda]

Please post a URL so we can take a look at the site and see if this is the only thing that needs to be done to improve your rankings. If you took a major hit, there is probably something else wrong.

[rs07258]

Hello,

Sure.

Here is the site: Art Lessons Online | Free Arts & Crafts Instruction School

Thanks for taking a look! I really appreciate it.

[weslinda]

I guess the key question is what are your goals? Your goals and expenses determine what you should do and whether it is worth your time.

There are a number of key pieces to an optimal web site. Take a peek at 25 things your web site should have. This is a good start to helping you understand what your web site should be.

Also, you do have some validation issues that need to be addressed to clean up your web site. Visit The W3C Markup Validation Service to see what those issues are.

[mjtaylor]

Your page does not look as though it needs a full redesign to be SE friendly ...

Nothing wrong with navigation at the top - especially if you were to use it - for example, your home page link could have the anchor text "Art Lessons Online: Home" - assuming 'art lessons online' is your primary target KW phrase ...

I would guess that's not the reason your ranking dropped ...

IMO, MJ

[weslinda]

The one key negative I did feel was the ads being forced on me. I forgot to mention that in my other post. I got popup ads on your homepage even though I'm using browsers that stop that. Sooo, that could be another negative from a user standpoint. Not sure if that would really affect your rankings or not.

[mjtaylor]

I didn't get any pop up ads in IE - guess my Google toolbar is useful for something other than PR and backlink info - I do get the pop ups in Firefox ... and I get the drop in box in both, of course ... MJ

[weslinda]

Got the ads in IE7 with Google Toolbar and IE7 Popup blocking on. Soo...it's something that definately is at a minimum an annoyance to the visitor.

[jaca]

Any site that pops up a screensaver ad window is in for problems with traffic, in my opinion. Just by the fact that most people will click off without even looking at the site. Also the main page looks more like it was built for Google Ads. I certainly would move content 'above the fold' and get rid of the screensaver ad.

My 2 cents.

Jan

[4bidden]

As for your question about moving the content above the navigation....

I recently tested it on a site of mine and it made no notable difference in rankings. It was the only variable changed.

[azoundria]

Remove the popup!

[incrediblehelp]

Ralph what are some specific keyword you ranked well for and now not. Also how high did you rank?

[edhan]

Everything looks fine to me and do not find any necessity to re-design. What search terms have your ranking drop? You might just need to optimize a little for that search keyword(s) to boost.

[stuart888]

Hi Ralph,

A full redesign of all your pages is a big task. If you keep your current design, and just move the contents around for better seo, then you are better off. Why not start with new pages first, and create a new-version.css page, make your content adjustements, and see how the pages do relative to your other pages.

Stuart

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by 4bidden

As for your question about moving the content above the navigation....

I recently tested it on a site of mine and it made no notable difference in rankings. It was the only variable changed.

I actually like navigation above content - especially if its keyword rich anchor text ...

[Webnauts]

I do not see any reason redesigning from scratch your site. You already have tableless CSS for layout and XHTML for structure.

Therefore you only need to change your code structure to:

- Header
- Main Navigation
- Main Content
- Sub-Navigation
- Adsense Ads
- Footer

By the way, the first think I thought when I came to your site that it is a MFA site.
Those ads would rather be better on the right side of the page.

Adding breadcrumbs would improve your navigation.

Also you have too less content.

What you are sure doing, you are confusing blind users and search engines crawlers, as you do not have a correct document outlining. That mean's you are implementing your heading tags totally wrong (<h1>,<h2>,etc). Read more about this here: HTML Tags and SEO

After all, the visual appearance does not look professional. But that is an off-topic comment.

That is all I could tell on the fly.

Good luck.