This technique, sometimes called "source-ordered content", was extremely helpful several years ago. But in more recent times I see less evidence that it makes a difference in ranking. It certainly can help to keep utility nav links, such as "Contact", "Shipping" and the like, closer to the bottom - mostly so they are not as likely to get chosen for a snippet or sitelinks.

The algos are much more sophisticated these days. They understand the visual segmentation of the page, something like HTML5 mark-up now proposes to standardize. So if the content block is not buried in total code soup, just having a clearly demarcated content area seems to be what matters most, IMO.

I have had cases where navigation came first in the code and the snippets ended up just being text versions of the navigation links.

I know if still happens b/c I saw this two days ago on a site I was helping a friend with.

Now I've started focussing more on the the meta description and the code order but I haven't been sure that if I provide a meta description, it will get taken for teaser code, especially if the search keyword is in the nav, but not the description.

Thoughts?

You're right, the snippet does vary according to the query terms. If the search keywords are not in the meta description, then you may well see some funky nav link in the snippet.

So I find my focus needs to be a marketing consideration: what keywords will generate IMPORTANT traffic if they rank? I could care less about how the snippet reads if the search terms are not going to generate well-targeted traffic. In fact, I'd rather not even get those clicks, they'll just pump up the bounce rate.

[edited by: tedster at 10:07 pm (utc) on May 22, 2009]

Thanks Ted - the last two sentences are a wonderful concise guide to writing meta descriptions!