Website Construction for Internal Link Building

Site Navigation

Site Navigation can be broken down into the main page navigation and a sub navigation. The main page navigation generally links to the main pages on the site. e.g. Home Page, About Us, Site Map, Contact Us

A sub navigation menu could include categories (for services, an ecommerce site or blog).

Whether you decide to have all your site navigation together in a dynamic menu or split up into a main navigation bar and sub menu there are some things you need to do to improve your internal link building and on-site search engine optimization.

• Use text links instead of image links.
  Search engines do not read images (yet) and neither does assistive technology people use to read web pages to them. Your visitors that use a non graphical browser won’t see the image either. And what if you make the link names too small in the images and people can’t read them?
  Text navigation links will add a search engine optimization element to your pages, add accessibility and add usability.
• Use a CSS dynamic menu instead of a Javascript driven menu.
  Although Google says it’s getting better at reading Javascript, that doesn’t mean the other search engines are.
  A CSS dynamic menu uses lists in the creatation of them. All the coding and links within the menu is within the actual web page, unlike some Javascript driven dynamic menus.
  With a CSS dynamic menu, you add search engine optimization, accessibility and usability by having the coding right in the page for screen readers and non graphical browser users plus the search bots will see the links
  too!
• Provide breadcrumb navigation.
  Breadcrumb navigation contains links to the sections within the site the page is. It shows the path of how the user got there.
  The search engine bots will also see your breadcrumb navigation and that will lead them to the pages within the path to the page. e.g. An ecommerce site can add great usability and on-page search engine optimization by including a breadcrumb navigation. The visitor can trace the path back to related previous pages if they landed on a product page plus they can trace their steps back as to how they got to the page. The search engine bot will do
  this too.
• Include a site map link.
  A traditional site map (one where you list all your pages on the site on a web page) is an important link. It adds usability to the site, especially if you have a large site, in that should a visitor get lost they can go to the site map and find where to start over. A site map is also great for those who don’t want to go through all the navigation to find what they want, the people who want to cut to the chase and get to where they want to get to now. The search engine bots will also visit that page, which will lead them to the other pages on the site.
• Have your categories well organized and use keywords to describe them.
  Well organized categories will group like topic pages together. This in turn will interlink with pages of the same topic, which is good from a search engine optimization point of view and also makes them more useable.
  Any time linked text contains a keyword or phrase related to the page it links to it is a plus.
• Have your home page link link to your domain name.
  Some people link their home link/button to the index page (home page) of their site. e.g. index.htm Yes, a visitor will reach the home page, so will the search engine bots. The both of them will also reach your home page if they type www.yourdomainname.com. Why this works is a web server will look for the index page (your home page in this discussion) when someone types just your domain name. Web servers have a hierarchy of which pages are presented first when someone types your domain name. Whether you are to use index, default or another name is up to your web hosting, check their documentation and use the correct file name for your home page.
  Typing www.yourdomainname.com or www.yourdomainname.com/index.htm present the same page, this is a problem because you are linking to your home page one way and all the incoming links that people are placing on their sites/blogs/social networking sites will use www.yourdomainname. The search bots will see these links as 2 different links. The more links that look exactly the same pointing to a page the more votes for the page. If you use the one with index.htm for your internal link building then the votes get reduced for the home page so link to the home page just like everyone outside your site does so all the votes go to the same version of the url.
• Make a conscience choice about the file names of your pages.
  Search engine optimization is all about creating a theme of a topic. You select your web page file names, web page title tags and anchored text with that theme in mind.
  Instead of just having a services page, if it is a specific service, say dog walking, then a better choice of web page file name would be dog-walking-service.htm Put this together with proper use of the title tag, meta data, headings in the pages and related content and you are one more step to an overall well optimized site.