Google: Content Order, Placement & Position Matters

Search engines have been changing and adjusting to fit the rapidly changing online environment that they are aimed at. However, one part of the search engine ranking that many people might not get is the way in which content is ranked. For example, does the ordering, position and placement of content matter? Or does it not matter so long as the content is good stuff?

Well, at the recent PubCon event, Gary Illyes, a Google mastermind, made a little bit of a comment that certainly raised some eyebrows. He said that the placement of content matters and can have an impact on the rankings that you get in the long-term. The conversation came up during the talk about the new Google mobile-first index. Asked a question from the floor about placement, he mentioned that if your mobile pages have the same content but in different places versus the desktop equivalent, then it might cause some issues.

Since Google fully renders the layout of a page before ranking it, there’s no real inherent value in trying to cheat the system. In the past, you could just load all your content up at the top of the code – that is no longer going to work as well as it once did. Google can see where content sits in relation to the actual page, not just the code. Therefore, you should make sure that you try and get a more uniform approach to content placement.

It is a topic of some importance that you should look to pay attention to. While it might not be essential to the usage that you get from Google, you can be sure that it will have some part to play in your rankings.

If you want to get the very best search engine placement that you can, then you should almost certainly pay attention to this side of things. Placement was always something that mattered: now it’s been confirmed, you should look to act today.

Source: Search Engine Roundtable