Plan Your Navigation with SEO from the Start Ross Dunn - CEO, StepForth Web Marketing - Jun 9, 2009

Site navigation is the only means by which a search engine or a visitor can find the important parts of your website. But your navigation system must be carefully planned to yield maximum results.

Search Engine Friendly

Here are some general guidelines for search engine friendly navigation:

• Text format. It is best if all navigation is in a text format that can be read by search engines. If you're not sure if the text you see is readable, try highlighting the text with your mouse. If you are able to highlight it, then it is readable by search engines.
  
• Drop-down menus. If you are considering a fancier menu that has drop-down elements, make sure this technology is as search engine friendly as possible. I recommend using menus created with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for best results. Flash and JavaScript menu systems cannot be easily followed by search engines unless the website developer is extremely careful.

Planning Your Navigation

The navigation of your website should be planned ahead of time to ensure that search engines and users alike can access the content efficiently. The most important aspect for search engine optimization planning is creating the navigation around a specific set of keyword ranking targets. Here is the process I recommend for planning your website's navigation to maximize search engine rankings:

1. Plan the structure of your website so you know how many pages you want and how they will be categorized by section.
   
   
2. Make a preliminary choice of a keyword phrase for each sectional page and content page. You can ignore more general pages such as your Privacy Policy.
   
   
3. Research the keyword targets you have indicated for each sectional and content page using a keyword selection tool, such as KeywordDiscovery.com or WordTracker.com. If you find that the phrase you chose is not as popular as you thought, try other variations or synonyms until you find the keyphrase that is searched for most often. Then make that keyphrase the focus of the page in question. You have just completed the hardest part of optimizing a website -- choosing the best keywords to target. Congratulations!
   
   
4. Optimize the navigation keywords for your users as well as for SEO. The navigation menu must be instantly understood by your visitors, so you'll probably need to make some trade-offs. Ideally, the links pointing to each page of your site will reflect the keyword target chosen for that page, so long as the main navigation remains clear and concise.

For example, if you owned a boat dealership for an often-searched boat called a Chesapeake Cruiser (imaginary), a less-optimized navigation bar might be:

Information | Sales | Virtual Tours | The Building Process | Contact Us

A more optimized version would utilize target keywords such as:

Chesapeake Cruisers | Sales | Tour a Chesapeake | Building a Chesapeake | Contact Us

These changes are small but significant in terms of adding important, searched-for keywords to every page on your site. To refine this further, I recommend creating a more verbose text navigation bar in the footer of every page. This navigation can use more precise, "long-tail" search phrases, since you aren't as restricted by space in the footer of a webpage as you are at the top.

Chesapeake Boats | Chesapeake Cruisers For Sale | Luxury Boat Virtual Tour | Building Your Dream Boat | Contact Chesapeake Cruisers

Don't Forget: The navigation should be in a search engine friendly format.

Additional Tips

• Cross-link keywords in your content pages. When you write each page of your website, make sure to use the keyword targets you selected for that page within the title, headline, subheadings, and the body text of each of your content pages. Then, whenever it seems appropriate -- don't do it just for the sake of SEO -- use that target phrase within your site's other content pages to link to the page focused on that keyphrase. By doing this, you reinforce the reputation of the page in the search engines' eyes. The more a search engine sees similar words in hyperlinks pointing to a webpage, the higher the likelihood that page will obtain a higher ranking for those keywords.
  
• Use rel = "nofollow" attributes. Certain pages you don't need to rank high for, such as Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, Disclaimer, etc. In these cases, put a rel="nofollow" attribute within the hyperlink for each of these menu items. This tells Google not to follow and spider these links -- and it helps to pass more link reputation to the more important pages on your site. This technique, in a more advanced form, is known PageRank sculpting, often used in larger sites for content siloing to prevent PageRank leaks and focus link reputation. The code for a "no-follow" attribute looks like this:
  
  <a href="http://domain.com/privacy-policy" rel="nofollow">Privacy Policy</a>

Creating navigation using keyword targets you have researched will make your website far more likely to obtain top search engine rankings, as well as targeted traffic, because you have taken the time to choose your keyword targets carefully.

Ross Dunn is CEO of StepForth Web Marketing, a firm that has provided search engine optimization services since 1997. His company can help your website get much higher rankings for keywords that deliver results.