The way the engines view your page is different from the way it appears to the human viewer. If you go to a webpage and click on "View" in the top left hand corner of your browser and then click on "Source" you will be able to see the way the engines will see the page. Search engines read from the top of the page down in the HTML code. This means that the way they view the text in tables is very different than the way it is laid out to the human viewer on the screen.

To ensure that your most important keywords are placed prominently in the tables you will have to view the tables in the source code. You may find that the more important keywords, although appearing on the screen at the top of the tables are in fact way down the page in the source code, below less important text, graphics or navigation structure.

To ensure that your most important text is the first thing the search engines see use the simple table trick found on the following sites: