If you’re navigation is set up right, great things happen. Your visitors will move easily through site and find what they need with one simple click. They can find your products or services faster which leads them to your Request a Quote or Contact Us page – right where you want them!

You want to make sure your website navigation uses what we call an “F format”. This means your navigation should run across the top and left side of your website. Your top navigation should include links to general company and website information such as “Industries Served”, “About Us”, “Request a Quote”, “Contact Us”, etc. It’s important to always include a “Home” link in the top navigation as well. Your left navigation should include links to your metal coating, roll forming, die casting, whatever services or products you offer.

The size, or number of links, on your navigation is also important. This will depend on the size of your website, but make you don’t have too many links or you can overwhelm your visitors and they may leave your site. Remember, you want to keep it simple for your new visitors who are unfamiliar with your site. Fewer than twenty to twenty-five links is ideal.

It’s crucial that your navigation is in text, not images. The search engines can’t read the words in an image. If you’re using images, this will really hurt your SEO efforts especially in Google.

If you follow these guidelines, your users should have a pleasant visit and return to your site. Your navigation also plays an important role in search engine optimization. Make sure to read How to Build a Great Website Navigation next week!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 10:07 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.