Site Navigation in SEO- Search Engine and User Friendly Navigation
Site Navigation is one of the most fundamental issues with search engine optimization. Site Navigation is an essential component of a website and must be prepared keeping in mind both the search engines and the user.
Navigation for Search Engine– Make sure all the menus (site pages ) are accessible by the search engine bots.
Navigation for User– It should be user friendly with ease in navigation with proper choice of colors.
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| Site Navigation in Seo (Image Source:- Adobeperson ) |
Types of Navigation
Header Navigation– The Navigation menus are displayed on the header area (Most common one)
Sidebar Navigation– The Navigation menus are displayed on the sidebar (Can be found on blogs)
Secondary Header Navigation– The Navigation menus are displayed under the first header.
Drop Down Navigation– Additional drop down menus are displayed as a drop down from the header menu.
Breadcrumb Navigation– Helping users to track their location. Useful for large sites such as E-Commerce websites.
Flash Navigation– Used to make the site more attractive (Not search engine friendly as the crawlers find it difficult to crawl Flash based websites).
Guidelines for SEO friendly Navigation
1- Keep navigation simple and use basic HTML Text based navigation to prepare it. It’s beneficial for both the user and the search engine crawlers.
2- Many web designers make the mistake of using images and funky java scripts for navigational purpose. These links may not be seen if the user is viewing the website after disabling the javascript.
3- Use breadcrumbs and category navigation for large e-commerce websites.
4- Use direct static HTML link to every inner page of your website.
5- Do not use more than 100 links per page as the search engine crawlers might ignore large volume of links from a single page.
6- Test your navigation with a help of a text browser like lynx. You may also see the cached version of your webpage on Google to see whether the menus can be crawled well by the bots.
Also See:-
Search Engine Optimization
Landing Page
How to present content on a website ?
Site Wide Links
Seo Tutorial
Rel Canonical Link Element
Meta tags
What is good content ?
Seo Techniques
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