Navigation knowledge

When you consider web-site navigation, there are two types: internal navigation and external navigation. Internal navigation involves the links that move users from one page to another on your site. External navigation refers to links that take users away from your page. For your navigation to be SEO-friendly, you have to use both types of navigation carefully.

Look at a number of different high-ranking web sites. How is the navigation of those sites designed? In most cases, you’ll find that the top sites have a left-hand navigation bar that’s often text-based, and some have a button-based navigation bar across the top of the page. Few have just buttons down the left side, and all of them have text links somewhere in the landing page.

The navigation for many sites looks the same, because this plan works. Having a text-based navigation bar on the left works for SEO because it allows you to use anchor tags with the keywords you’re using for the site. It also allows crawlers to move from one page to another with ease.

Buttons are harder for crawlers to navigate, and depending on the code in which those buttons are designed, they might be completely invisible to the crawler. That’s why many companies that put button-based links at the top of the page also usually include a text-based navigation bar on the left. The crawler can still move from page to page, but the user is happy with the design of the site.

The other element you see on nearly every page is text-based links within the content of the page. Again, those links are usually created with anchor tags that include the keywords the site is using to build site ranking. This is an effective way to gain site ranking. The crawler comes into the site, examines the linking system, examines the content of the page, compares these items, and finds that the links are relevant to the content, which is relevant to the keywords. That’s how your ranking is determined. Every element works together.

Take the time to design a navigational structure that’s not only comfortable for your users, but is also crawler-friendly. If it can’t always be perfect for the crawlers, make sure it’s perfect for users. Again, SEO is influenced by many different things, but return visits from users are the ultimate goal. This may mean that you have to test your site structure and navigation with a user group and change it a few times before you find a method that works both for returning users and for the crawlers that help to bring you new users. Do those tests. That’s the only way you’ll learn what works.

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The Importance of Keywords

Basically, keywords capture the essence of your web site. Keywords are what a potential visitor to your site puts into a search engine to find web sites related to a specific subject, and the keywords that you choose will be used throughout your optimization process. As a small-business owner, you will want your web site to be readily visible when those search engine results come back.

Using the correct keywords in your web-site content can mean the difference in whether you come back in search engine results as one of the first 20 web sites (which is optimum) or buried under other web sites several pages into the results (which means hundreds of results were returned before your site). Studies show that searchers rarely go past the second page of search results when looking for something online.

Take into consideration for a moment the telephone book Yellow Pages. Say you’re looking for a restaurant. The first thing you’re going to do is find the heading restaurant, which would be your keyword. Unfortunately, even in a smaller city, there might be a page or more of restaurants to look through. However, if you narrow your search to Chinese restaurants, that’s going to cut in half your time searching for just the right one. Basically, that’s how keywords work in search engines and search engine optimization. Choosing the appropriate keywords for your web site will improve your search engine rankings and lead more search engine users to your site.

How do you know which keywords to use? Where do you find them? How do you use them? The answer to these questions will save you a great deal of time when creating a web site. Where you rank in search engine results will be determined by what keywords are used and how they are positioned on your web site. It’s critical to choose appropriate keywords, include variations of those keywords, avoid common (or “stop”) words, and know where and how many times to place them throughout your web site.

Used correctly, keywords will allow you to be placed in the first page or two of the most popular search engines. This tremendously increases the traffic that visits your web site. Keep in mind, the majority of Internet users find new web sites through use of a search engine. High search engine rankings can be as effective, if not more effective, than paid ads for publicity of your business. The business you receive from search engine rankings will also be more targeted to your services than it would be with a blanket ad. By using the right keywords, your customer base will consist of people who set out to find exactly what your site has to offer, and those customers will be more likely to visit you repeatedly in the future.

To decide which keywords should be used on your web site, you can start by asking yourself the most simple, but relevant, question. Who needs the services that you offer? It’s an elementary question, but one that will be most important in searching for the correct keywords and having the best search engine optimization. If you’re marketing specialty soaps, you will want to use words such as soap (which really is too broad a term), specialty soap, bath products, luxury bath products, or other such words that come to mind when you think of your product. It’s also important to remember to use words that real people use when talking about your products. For example, using the term “cleaning supplies” as a keyword will probably not result in a good ranking because people thinking of personal cleanliness don’t search for “cleaning supplies.” They search for “soap” or something even more specific, like “chamomile soap.”

In addition to the terms that you think of, people also will look for web sites using variations of words and phrases — including misspellings. It might help to have friends and family members make suggestions of what wording they would use to find a similar product and include those words in your keyword research as well as misspellings of those words. An example might be “chamomile.” Some people may incorrectly spell it “chammomile,” so including that spelling in your keywords can increase your chance of reaching those searchers. Also remember to use capitalized and plural keywords. The more specific the words are, the better the chance will be that your web site is targeted. Just remember that words such as “a,” “an,” “the,” “and,” “or,” and “but” are called stop words. These words are so common they are of no use as keywords.

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Understanding usability

Usability. It means different things to different web site designers. It’s also been at the top of every user’s requirements list since the Web became part of daily life. When users click through to your web site from a search results page, they want the site to work for them. That means they want to be able to find what they’re looking for, to navigate from place to place, and to be able to load pages quickly, without any difficulties.

Web-site users are impatient. They don’t like to wait for pages to load, they don’t want to deal withFlash graphics or JavaScript, and they don’t want to be lost. These are all elements of usability — how the user navigates through and uses your web site. And yes, usability has an impact on SEO. Especially from the perspective of your site links and loading times.

When a search engine crawler comes to your site, it crawls through the site, looking at keywords, links, contextual clues, meta and HTML tags, and a whole host of other elements. The crawler will move from page to page, indexing what it finds for inclusion in search results. But if that crawler reaches the first page and can’t get past the fancy Flash you’ve created, or if it gets into the site and finds links that don’t work or that lead to unexpected locations, it will recognize this and make note of it in the indexed site data. That can damage your search engine rankings.

Navigation knowledge

When you consider web-site navigation, there are two types: internal navigation and external navigation. Internal navigation involves the links that move users from one page to another on your site. External navigation refers to links that take users away from your page. For your navigation to be SEO-friendly, you have to use both types of navigation carefully.

Look at a number of different high-ranking web sites. How is the navigation of those sites designed? In most cases, you’ll find that the top sites have a left-hand navigation bar that’s often text-based, and some have a button-based navigation bar across the top of the page. Few have just buttons down the left side, and all of them have text links somewhere in the landing page.

The navigation for many sites looks the same, because this plan works. Having a text-based navigation bar on the left works for SEO because it allows you to use anchor tags with the keywords you’re using for the site. It also allows crawlers to move from one page to another with ease.

Buttons are harder for crawlers to navigate, and depending on the code in which those buttons are designed, they might be completely invisible to the crawler. That’s why many companies that put button-based links at the top of the page also usually include a text-based navigation bar on the left. The crawler can still move from page to page, but the user is happy with the design of the site.

The other element you see on nearly every page is text-based links within the content of the page. Again, those links are usually created with anchor tags that include the keywords the site is using to build site ranking. This is an effective way to gain site ranking. The crawler comes into the site, examines the linking system, examines the content of the page, compares these items, and finds that the links are relevant to the content, which is relevant to the keywords. That’s how your ranking is determined. Every element works together.

Take the time to design a navigational structure that’s not only comfortable for your users, but is also crawler-friendly. If it can’t always be perfect for the crawlers, make sure it’s perfect for users. Again, SEO is influenced by many different things, but return visits from users are the ultimate goal. This may mean that you have to test your site structure and navigation with a user group and change it a few times before you find a method that works both for returning users and for the crawlers that help to bring you new users. Do those tests. That’s the only way you’ll learn what works.

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