How You Should Be Thinking About Site Navigation

Developing website navigation systems is one area in which many webmasters can go wrong.  Often, small business internet marketing specialists want to stand out among the crowd and do something that might be a little different.  While that is great in some cases, too much difference can result in problems with your traffic.  Specifically, using navigation systems on your site that may be too different or too innovative can ultimately affect your SEO in a negative way.  These are problems that are quite simple to avoid, however.
Most SEO consultants are generally going to recommend that you stick to something familiar when it comes to your navigation system.  People like what is familiar to them, and they will be more comfortable on your site.  With that said, let’s talk about some of the possible mistakes that are made by small business internet marketing specialists as they try to come up with navigation systems for their sites.

1. A complex navigation system can be a turnoff for visitors.  People do not want to have to “figure out” your site, for the most part.  They want to arrive and be easily able to find and access the information that they are searching for.  If you make them look too hard, they will quickly look elsewhere.  This affects your bounce rate and your number of page views, which can affect your search engine optimization and ultimately lower your search engine placement.
2. Complex navigation systems are not always crawled properly by the search engine spiders.  What happens as a result is that the text in the navigation system may be overlooked.  This can affect your SEO because you are very likely to be using your main keywords in your navigation system, and if these are overlooked in such a prominent location on your site, your SEO will suffer.
3. Google likes to place the emphasis on the user’s experience.  Complex navigation systems do not enhance the user’s experience, in fact, most surveys show that people are not interested in exploring the new options and this will not help you enhance their experience.
4. Drop down menus are well known for causing problems with search engines.  Although initially developed to be a great way to expand the navigation system, they are quickly becoming a hazard to your search engine optimization efforts because of the extra effort that it takes to find the information that user’s need.  When you add in the fact that a large number of users are interacting with your site on a mobile device, drop down menus become even less appealing because getting at them on a tiny screen can be a huge problem, and making multiple attempts to use a touch screen with tiny links to pages is infuriating for many.
5. Although many small business internet marketing specialists think that buttons work better, especially on mobile devices, they can be problematic for navigation systems.  Your SEO consultants will explain to you that the text that is contained in the button is essentially embedded in the button image, and this means that that text is not properly crawled by the search engines.  Again, you are likely to be using keywords as the button text, so opt to use links instead of using buttons, and you will not only get the benefit of having good anchor text and links, but your navigation keys will be read properly when the site is crawled by the search engine spiders.
6. Do the expected, and do it well.  Most surveys show that people like to have navigation systems that they expect to see when arriving at a website.  This means the standard style, across the top of the page, possibly down the side, but nothing too crazy.  Keeping things simple will help you keep the interest of the visitor, and make it more likely that they will explore your site, leading to more page views and ultimately an improvement in your search engine placement.

There are parts of your online marketing strategy that should be innovative and unique, but when it comes to the navigation of your site, you want to truly connect with the visitors by doing the expected, and doing the easiest thing that you can.  If they are turned off by something as immediate and as simple as your navigation system, all of your hard work to make the rest of your site professional, functional, useful and innovative is going to be wasted.
Plan your navigation system to account for both the users and the search engines, and you will find that it is more successful.  You will get the traffic that you need for good search engine placement, and also the conversions that you need to experience good profit and success.  For assistance with developing a great navigation system, one that pleases users and search engines alike, work with SEO consultants.

Regards
Greatsol-SEO Team
www.greatsol-seo.com