Menus and Navigation
This is another one of those really
important things that will make or break your website.
The methods used to design navigation into your website
are different depending on if you're designing for visitors
or search engines.
Planning out your navigation requires
that you know in advance what your website layout is going
to be and how much priority are you going to give to the
search engine optimization of your website design and
content. This can get pretty difficult if you have alot
of undeveloped ideas for your website.
Navigation designs and menu ideas
are all over the internet and as you surf around notice
what you like and don't like. This will help you form
your own ideas for the navigation layout.
Here's three important things to
remember about website navigation and menus. These aren't
rules but you'll find that if you follow these suggestions
your website will do alot better all the way around in
looks, ease of navigation and search engine placements.
Two Mouse Clicks - A visitor to
your website should be able to reach any other page of
your website in just one or two mouse clicks. This can
get hard to accomplish in larger websites but making sure
you consider it in you entire website design is what's
important. A website built on this two click concept is
much more organized.
Site Map and Homepage Links - A
link back to your Site Map or Homepage should be on every
page of your website.
Javascripts and Flash - All the
really nice exotic mind blowing menus are all done in
Flash or Javascripts. Unfortunately, the word in the SEO
world is that search engines either can't or don't crawl
navigation layouts designed in Javascript and Flash. If
your website navigation is designed in JavaScript or Flash
rollovers then this would apply to you.
There isn't any way around this
problem and if good search engine results are important
to you, then you have to apply the 'Lottery
Rule'.
If top search engine results aren't
important to you there's no problem and you can use anything
you want.
Visit the Menu Pricing page for
more examples and descriptions Flash and JavaScripts Menus
and Navigation.
