When building or assessing a website, one of the most important considerations is to ensure that your navigation is SEO friendly. Here are the top 5 things you should do to make your home page navigation search engine readable.
1. Avoid menus that use Flash, JavaScript and images
Search engine spiders cannot crawl flash or JavaScript generated menus, nor can they read images. A navigation should always be in plain readable text or HTML.
2. From most important to least important
Always put your most important menu item, product or service at the top level in your navigation. In order to tell the search engines, “This is what my business is all about”, they should never be more than one click deep.
3. Use breadcrumbs
They aren’t just tasty in a Caesar salad; they are also fantastic for usability, way-finding and SEO purposes. The breadcrumb is the row of internal links typically at the top of the page that allows users to navigate quickly to a previous section.
4. Keep it simple but effective
Using marketing lingo that no one understands can be confusing. For example, ambiguous terms like “Connect”, “Target” and “Learn”, may potentially confuse users. To mitigate confusion, help users find what they’re looking for by using descriptive words and phrases that they, and the search engines, will understand.
5. Don’t over-design; consider the user
If your navigation doesn’t look clickable then no one will click on it. Don’t confuse your users with over-designed navigations. Consider simplicity and clarity when it comes your global navigation. To ensure that users are accomplishing the proper goals, conversion rate optimization (CRO) services will help identify where and how users are interacting with your site.
1. Avoid menus that use Flash, JavaScript and images
Search engine spiders cannot crawl flash or JavaScript generated menus, nor can they read images. A navigation should always be in plain readable text or HTML.
2. From most important to least important
Always put your most important menu item, product or service at the top level in your navigation. In order to tell the search engines, “This is what my business is all about”, they should never be more than one click deep.
3. Use breadcrumbs
They aren’t just tasty in a Caesar salad; they are also fantastic for usability, way-finding and SEO purposes. The breadcrumb is the row of internal links typically at the top of the page that allows users to navigate quickly to a previous section.
4. Keep it simple but effective
Using marketing lingo that no one understands can be confusing. For example, ambiguous terms like “Connect”, “Target” and “Learn”, may potentially confuse users. To mitigate confusion, help users find what they’re looking for by using descriptive words and phrases that they, and the search engines, will understand.
5. Don’t over-design; consider the user
If your navigation doesn’t look clickable then no one will click on it. Don’t confuse your users with over-designed navigations. Consider simplicity and clarity when it comes your global navigation. To ensure that users are accomplishing the proper goals, conversion rate optimization (CRO) services will help identify where and how users are interacting with your site.
Hello. impressive job. I did not anticipate this. This is a fantastic story. Thanks!
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