Thu Dec 27 03:03:17 PST 2018

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? Where they are in that site
? Where they have been

Navigation and Search Engines
Good navigation helps search engines better understand the site structure and
helps site users. Typically, your most important documents will have the greatest
number of inbound links.
Often, people will use tabs or images for their links that have a minimal amount of
descriptive text in them. You can offset this by using descriptive text links in the
page footer. You can see an example of this technique at
http://www.search-marketing.info. It is common to have one set of navigation
that is used by site visitors and another that is used by search engine spiders.
Proper navigation also gives you descriptive internal links. A popular technique for
doing this is using bread crumb navigation.
If I broke this book into online pages, the navigation for what you are reading now
would look as follows: SEO Book Home > Writing for Search Engines > Web
Site Navigation.
? The first link would be a link to the home page.
? The second link would be to the chapter on search engine
optimization. These links would be optimized text links that help
define the purpose of my pages.
? The third piece of text would not be a link, but would just be text
saying the page where the user is.
Setting up navigation looks professional, helps the user, and helps search engines
understand the relationships between pages on your site. It also gives you better
usability and higher rankings. You can?t beat that with a stick!
Visual Segmentation
Navigation that is easy to use aids conversion. Break navigation into main sections
and subsections, using eye breakpoints and visual cues that enhance scanability (like
bold text or a graphic
to highlight when a reader is looking at a new section of
navigation.
Weighting Your Internal Navigation
Some webmasters try to promote everything across their entire site. This means
that some of the less important pages are given as much link equity as more
important pages.
You can?t promote everything to the optimimal level though unless you promote
some sections more than others. Seasonal products, for example, might deserve