Do you use a side navigation bar on your website? Many of us do - it makes for an eye-catching, easy-to-use navigational layout. The received wisdom is generally to place these sidebars (constructed by using tables) to left of page. The main reason for doing this is that visitors reading western scripts read from left to right, and are therefore more likely to be drawn to text at beginning of a reading line. This is great, but unfortunately, search engines don't read like us humans. If a page has tables in it, a search engine robot will read from left to right, yes, but it will read entire contents of a table before moving on to next one, since it treats anything after tab as main body text, even if we don't intend it to be. Chances are that your web pages are laid out with tables; first containing a logo, then second containing navigation bar, and subsequent tables (appearing to right of navigation bar) with text WE view as main body text. This means that your keyword rich text often doesn't appear until some way down page as far as search engine robot is concerned. Since search engines determine relevancy by analyzing occurrence of words, particularly at top of page, this type of layout is ultimately going to hurt your rankings. I've struggled to find ways of overcoming this problem in past; e.g; introductory keyword rich text above logo and keywords in side bar. I achieved some success using these methods, but as a webmaster in a competitive sector, I've been unhappy about with leaving my carefully honed body text so far "down" page, when maybe competitors had edge. Then I discovered a way to arrange table layout so that text you want humans to see also appears first to robots. You simply ADD ANOTHER VERY SMALL CELL to your table layout. It's difficult to illustrate exactly what I mean in an e-mail text - easiest way is to take following HTML examples, cut-and-paste them to them into text editor, and from there, into your HTML editor, then compare results; First an example of a typical table layout, which leaves The body text in wrong place;

Home Product 1 Product2 Links Contact Us< d>	lots of body text with selected keywords< d> < r> < able>		The Ebay "Powerseller" secrets to save you from the 3 P's Written by Rob Noble "The Ebay "Powerseller" secrets to save you from 3 P's" 1100 words. Formatted to 60 characters. You may publish this article free of charge in your ezine, web site, ebook or print publication so long as copyright notice and resource paragraph (at end of article) are included. Rob Noble Email: ByRobNoble@robnoble.com ---------- Article Begins Below This Line ---------- THE EBAY "POWERSELLER" SECRETS TO SAVE YOU FROM THE 3 P's Copyright 2003 Rob Noble I'm just amazed that more people don't realise it! Ebay has a secret that makes it THE best market in world – offline or online! In fact it's THE best market EVER. Do I sound enthusiastic about Ebay?! I do! good - I love it. Let me give you an example of why I love Ebay. Years ago I set up my very first business to help me pay my way through college. It was a stall selling antiques (well more like rubbish!) in Camden market in London (yes, sorry I'm a Brit!). When I started I didn't have a clue. I went through all junk I'd collected over years and put that as "stock". Then I went to a number of auctions, rooted about in boxes and bought some that looked "promising". Then I rented my stall (5.30am to get a spare table) set up my "stuff" and waited. 9 hours later, after watching person after person perform 3 P's (Pick up, Put down and P*** off! - apologies for language but it IS official term amongst UK dealers) I began realising that my items only appeared promising to ME! During this time of sitting stiffly, trying to disappear into my jacket both to keep warm and from sheer embarrassment, I noticed that certain dealers seemed to act like magnets. People didn't simply go to them to perform rites of 3 P's, they actually lingered, discussed and, joy of joys - reached into their wallets and bought! Over weeks I ventured over to these stalls and hovered while I watched magnificent spectacle of customers parting with cash! Eventually even I couldn't help notice that certain items seemed to be selling more regularly than others, and, as some of dealers took pity on an earnest young man (I developed a helpless sort of pitiful look that worked a treat!) I began to learn business of buying items that people actually WANT to buy. And miracle of miracles came day when I actually made more profit than I was paying in rent for stall! The absolute, sheer, magnificent beauty of Ebay is you don't have to go through all that. I don't think there can be any market, of any kind, where so much information is available to public. Because Ebay allows you to SEARCH COMPLETED AUCTIONS for free! And that is an advantage no other market allows. Everything you could possibly need to know is there, available to you just for time required to root it out. Now imagine, if back then, at Camden market I had been allowed same advantage. Firstly, before going anywhere near an auction, I could have had a good look at WHAT KIND OF THINGS WERE IN DEMAND. The dealers attracting all those people at market had learnt over years what kind of items were ready sellers and what was likely to sit there for months tying up valuable space and capital. With Ebay you can search completed auctions looking at relative "SELL THRU RATES" (percentage of sales to total number of auctions) and condense those years of trial and error to a few days or weeks of evening study.
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