SEO Tips: SEO Friendly Site Navigation

March 27, 2009

In our last post about making seo friendly file names we looked at how you can get a little boost in web searches by naming your files optimally so “urban-t-shirts.html” as opposed to “page23.html”. In this post we’ll look at how by extension we can build our site navigation to link all our relevantly titled pages together.

It goes without saying that our navigation, its functionality, titles and positioning should be clear and designed in a way that encourages your customers to purchase your products. I recommend you buy the Don’t Make Me Think from Amazon. It does a great job of helping you get a visitor friendly site navigation in place. It’s a short read with great screen shots. Worth your while if you are looking to improve your site navigation.

Make the title of your navigation items obvious, clear and keyword rich, leave your site visitor in doubt as to what they are going to find when they click the link. Put your site navigation in a place where the visitor expects to see it and have it work in a way that doesn’t make your prospective customer jump through hoops.

You’ll find that as you progress that everything on your site and its search engine visibility and success is interlinked. Coding is key to your site, consistent file naming to include keywords, naming navigational items using the same keywords as the page they link should all follow through logically.

How your navigation system is coded is also important as it is the method by which not only your customers but also the search engine progress through your site. If you have a complex drop down system that is activated by rollovers it can be tricky to use and depending how it is coded difficult for search engines to read.

Now as well as your regular site navigation it can be helpful to the search engines to have text links of all the pages on your site readily available, whether that be on your home page or on a site map page, it doesn’t matter, just so long as it is accessible.

We’ll touch on this as we post more but the use of Cascading Style Sheets can provide you with an attractive, search engine friendly option for your site navigation. For a brief overview check out http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/css/css-navigation-menu.shtml.

So get someone who hasn’t visited your site to check it out. See how they move through the site. See how quickly they go to your store, that’s where you want them to go. And when they’re finished ask them about the site, what they thought, how easy it was to get round, did the links made sense?

Sometimes we just get too close to our sites, things make sense to us but they may not to people who don’t know our brand or what we are trying to convey with our site.

Site navigation not only serves as a route for the search engines to move through your site but also for your customers and having a logical, keyword rich and descriptive site navigation will not only help raise your search engine profile but will just as importantly help to convert more site visitors into customers.

So in closing does your site navigation make sense?
Does it clearly convey what is under each link?
Is it easy to you?
Is it keyword rich?

Till next time

[Disclaimer: Unless you are in re-building mode don't do this with existing files names on your site. You may lose traffic. It's a good either either to get another domain and start there or put it into place with each new site page you create.]

Posted in SEO