| SEO
Book Chapter 1- 7
Navigation
is about Links
Today’s
popularity or link-based search engines rely on hyperlinks to understand
what a page is about. They also follow the links to find pages to
index. Links are applied to menu buttons and text links which the
search engine robots can follow. If the search engine robot can
follow the link, it can be recorded within the search engine index.
Links inside JavaScript menus, Java applets and Flash movies, can
be followed by human users but not search engine robots.
Therefore,
navigation of pages and Web sites is different for users and search
engines. That can create a problem if the site planner and designer
can’t achieve a method of navigation that serves all end users
well.
Modern
search engines have to use very sophisticated techniques to index
poorly designed sites that don’t give a clear indication of
their content or indicate the importance of a particular Web page.
In addition, Web site html and JavaScript coding can be filled with
errors which makes it very hard for a search engine to make sense
of pages. They collect a lot of junk and make the best of it.
Search
engines have to quickly process a Web page for its meaning. Then
they must determine whether it is an important relevant document
to serve to search engine users. It does this by following links
and collecting pages. Then the indexing program compares what the
links suggest to what the documents are really about. Most Web site
owners are unaware of all these issues, and are left wondering at
the poor performance of their site.
Menus
and General Navigation
A standard
Web site utilizes a site menu usually on the left side of a page.
Frequently this menu is placed on each page, but not always. Menus
are an important feature of sites because they provide consistency
for users. That’s so they understand what the site is about
and how to get around the site to obtain what they want. A bad navigation
system can confuse visitors thereby making them feel uncomfortable.
Bad menus
give search engines a headache too. They can make optimization difficult.
A lot of search engine optimization work involves remedying problems
caused my menus.
Complexity
makes things even more difficult; and some site menus can be complex
such as those that are context sensitive. This means that a unique
menu shows for a certain section of the site. Or, general and section
specific menus might both be present side by side or within flyout
menus.
Until recently,
you didn’t have to worry about search engines following fly
out JavaScript menus. You could optimize the site as though they
didn’t exist. That’s nice when the search engine disregards
a troublesome menu with its complex links. Now search engines are
getting smarter and are able to follow these links. That affects
the ranking of pages and the whole structure of the site in the
search engine index. When Google follows and “reads”
JavaScript links, it will bring a huge change in which sites rank.
Whole sites will have to be redesigned. Some may even resort to
using Flash based menus to prevent search engines from following
the links.
In high-end
search engine optimization, some very complex menus could be utilized
that may cut across product groupings, price levels, product features
and store locations. For instance, a pop up menu could be shown
based on where the visitor is during their purchase process. It
may offer a range of options based on consumer’s impulse purchase
tendencies, and therefore may not be logical at all. Menus could
be developed on the fly, just as page text is now for many .asp
documents. The complexity of Web site navigation and its support
for search engine optimization is limited only by the capability
of the designer and site planner.
One important
things to consider, is that if and when, search engines really do
accept dynamically generated pages, context sensitive copy and menus
will then be presented to the search engine crawler. Your search
engine optimization expert will have to create a plan to optimize
that dynamically delivered content. There are many SEO people eagerly
anticipating the indexing of content generated on the fly. Keeping
it optimized however, is a major league task.
There is
no end to the possible variations in navigation menus and links
(or content) that can be presented to users. Most designers and
planners believe navigation is for the human user, and should allow
them to get where they’re going. They approach this aspect
of design without thinking of optimization needs. In their defense,
planning and integrating both in the site is a tough mental challenge
for anyone.
If
your Web site is designed properly from its inception, navigation-SEO
conflicts will be kept to a minimum. It’s all in the planning.
Going with the “patch up” approach will lead to tension,
misunderstandings, confusion and strife. Everyone ends up discouraged.
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