SEO Your Navigation

When you land on a website, you will ulimately bounce around the site using the sites navigation links. Typically this is down the left side of the page, sometimes across the top and usually again across the bottom. Website owners want you to be able to find what you need, quickly and easily but sometimes, they don't take that into account what the search engines want to see.

When you are creating a website, you need to pay special attention to the navigation of the site and use keyword friendly links. Remember, search engines, like Google, pay close attention to the actual text in the link. Search engines don't have any common sense therefore you must make sure your link text makes sense so engines like Google can understand what you are trying to rank for.

To put this into perspective, lets take a look at an example of what NOT to do when creating your nav links.

Now lets break down this nav panel. Firstly, unless you are NASA or Adobe, what possible good can come from having the link "Home"?? Are you trying to rank for the word "Home"? I hardly think so and on most sites that is usually the very first link on their page. Since Google puts the MOST impact on the very first link on your page, do you think the word "Home" is a waste? Absolutely. If you are selling neon signs, for example, I would hope that you would have that as the most important link on your pages. Now go down the rest of the navigation and you will notice that none of the main sites navigation links make any sense at all to a search engine. Is this company trying to rank for "who are we" or "installation & service" or "image gallery"?? I seriously doubt it. And take that even one step further. Installation & Service… of what?? How can a search engine possibly know what this particular website is trying to rank for? The fact is, it doesn't and its not going to guess. So basically this site has no chance of remotely competing against their competition. If I was their competition, I would eat them for lunch. And guess what, they are a direct competitor of mine. They sell neon signs. Think I am worried about them? Not a chance.

So, the first thing you need to do to get higher search engine rankings for your store is make sure that your navigation panel makes sense to the search engines. Your text links are critical to your success which is why keyword research is important in your design. I hope this helps.