How to get Google to look at my site properly

[julia99]

My site is indexed in Google, no problem, but for every page the text that displays in search results is always the same - the site menu! The page title itself appears correctly, but the description underneath always seems the same. The site menu is on all pages in a table column on the left, and it seems that that's the only bit of text the spider reads - it never gets as far as the real page content in the right hand column. Is there any way I can get it to skip to the second column of the table and ignore the first one? I am a novice so would be grateful for any advice.

Here's the site.

www.austen-beginners.com

Thanks!

[LeeU]

Why not put the menu in an include?

[julia99]

Er - what's an include? (did I mention I was a novice!)

[LeeU]

First, make sure your Web host allows them. Just ask if they allow server side includes.

Then, basically, you would create your navigation in a separate file and give it an extension of ".inc", i.e. "navbar.inc" (without the quotes). Then, place the following in your document where you want the navigation to display (be sure to remove the actual, hard-coded navigation from the actual document):

<!--#include virtual="navbar.inc" -->

You can find out more here (http://www.webreference.com/programming/ssi/intro/index.html).

[julia99]

I'll check it out - many thanks!