7 Best Practices to Improve Your Website Navigation

Utilize these best practices to ensure that your website is a good method for both users as well as search engines to locate your site’s content. When executed correctly, is excellent for your customers and for SEO performance.

As per SEO Company in Singapore, a well-designed website navigation system allows your users to find what they are looking for as well as for the search engine to browse. This results in increased conversions and more search engine visibility. But how do you do this? With these web navigation best techniques.

 

What is website navigation?

The navigation of your site (a.k.a. the internal structure of links) is the set of links on your site that connect your pages. The main purpose of web navigation is to assist users quickly finding information on your website.

Search engines make use of your website’s navigation to index and discover new pages. Links aid search engines in comprehending the content and background of the page, and also the connections between pages.

The users are the first priority. This is the fundamental principle of navigation on websites that you should always keep in mind. First, please the users. Create user-friendly navigation. Optimize your site for search engines, without affecting your user’s experience.

If you’re looking for more information regarding the navigation through websites you’ll be able to find these SEJ articles helpful:

• Internal Link Best Practices for Structure to Increase the SEO of Your Website Written by Corey Morris
• Your Complete Guide to Linking Internal Content Written by Julia McCoy

The remainder of this blog will be focusing more on best practices for the navigation of websites by describing different internal linking issues which could create issues for visitors to your website and search engines.

This subject will be particularly relevant and crucial for those working on websites that are large. Check out the brilliant SEO company in Singapore.

●  Website Navigation & Content Hierarchies

When you’re trying to find a specific page in a book you are able to simply go by way of the index or table of contents. As you stroll through the supermarket the aisles are marked with general category categories, and subcategories are also shown on the shelves.

Both are a great way to get through a variety of information. Content hierarchies help simplify the process of finding content. If a large amount of content is present it is possible to break it into a number of broad categories.

• Within these broad categories, you could create more specific classifications. This creates distinct levels of hierarchy that users are able to quickly navigate. The use of hierarchical content organizes the websites’ pages in a manner that makes sense to both the user and also to the search engine. Get to know the offered Search Engine Optimization Packages In Mumbai.

 

The importance of Content Hierarchies

As per the best SEO agency in Singapore, categorization, as well as subcategorization of content can help pages to rank better for general terms, and specifically long-tail terms.

●   Problems triggered by Content Hierarchies

The categorization of content and the building of hierarchies results in content silos which are clusters of topics that are closely related. Google crawls different pages at different speeds and follows links from various websites.

Certain content silos are more well-known than other silos. These sites may have more traffic and external links than other pages and, consequently, get higher rankings in organic search results.

If your content is not properly isolated and does not receive traffic and links and links, it may not be performing similarly – even if other content silos are performing extremely well.

The hierarchies of the content may separate some popular page clusters which may be far enough within the site. This is the point where horizontal linking comes into the picture. While the relevance of the link can aid when ranking websites, however, the absence of cross-linking between silos of content could affect the overall ranking.

There are numerous ways to build relations that connect categories horizontally to each other. The event that every page is part of the same site already suggests that these pages aren’t totally unrelated to one another. Check out The Best SEO company in Singapore.

●   Action Items Links Between Content Categories

Sort content into categories that creates category hierarchies that are logical for the user. Interlink these pages in a proper manner, going through the hierarchy. This is the vast majority of hyperlinks.

Create cross-links between pages that fall under different categories, yet share a lot in common.

●   Links between Content and Product Marketing Pages

Businesses selling more than one service or product will perform everything described above in categorizing pages by creating content silos and linking them. But it is true that several SEO groups and teams of writers also produce materials that are created to be engaging and easily shared.

Most often, this is in the form of blogs which includes posts that contain hyperlinks to specific products or services. Blog posts are useful as they drive more visitors toward product pages. But, many websites do not link the pages on their products back to blog posts.

Utilizing this kind of horizontal linking can provide users with information about your company or product and boosts the SEO’s performance. Action Items Linking Between Product Pages and Content Pages.

Pages for products should also include links to related marketing pages. This could include FAQs, blog posts, and manuals for products. Check out the best Search Engine Optimization Packages In Mumbai.

●   Website Navigation Utilizing JavaScript Effects

Sometimes, websites are sometimes created in JavaScript. This can be a problem since search engines are unable to locate internal links created in JavaScript.

While Google has made improvements in recent times in processing JavaScript, SEO experts have concluded that results aren’t consistent. Other search engines have no capability when it comes to processing JavaScript.

This means that your internal linking could be lost entirely as search engines go through your site. The SEO world is divided on whether or not using JavaScript is appropriate.

On the other hand, certain SEO experts steer clear of JavaScript entirely. However, Web designers as well as usability specialists believe that JavaScript is vital to user experience.

I think there’s an acceptable middle ground in which JavaScript is a viable option without causing SEO problems. Take a look at the leading SEO company in Singapore.

●   Links that show and hide existing page content

JavaScript allows you to show and remove certain content from pages without changing the web page you’re viewing. If this is the case the entire content is loaded onto the page.

In this scenario, the search engines remain in a position to crawl all your content even though certain portions of it are hidden.

This only works in the case where the content is hidden are not too significant and it becomes a problem when the whole page is changed however the URL stays the same.

Problems arise due to the fact that when you conceal more content in one URL, it muddles the primary content of what this page is about. Each topic must be given its own webpage. Check out our packages for search engine marketing for local business in Mumbai

The Action Items are Links that Show and hide Content

For content that is small in size take out the anchor tag and replace it with the JavaScript for on-click event handling.

●    You can use CSS in order to manage the cursor, and switch from an arrow to a hand-pointer.

In the case of large volumes of content, such as scrolling sites with a single page, not all content needs to be loaded prior to loading.

1. Only pre-load content that is directly linked with the website’s URL.
2. For every anchor tag, you should have an Ahrefs value as well as the option to click.
3. The Ahrefs value is an entirely new URL that only preloads the content that is related to this URL.
4. The onclick feature will stop the URL’s new content from being loaded but will allow the content of the URL that is in the destination to load.
5. Utilize the push State function to change the URL even if the page was not loading.

A more thorough explanation of how this could be done on specific websites is clearly explained in this presentation given at SEO Clarity in 2016. Take a look at the offered Search Engine Optimization Packages In Mumbai.

It focuses on the AngularJS the most popular JavaScript framework, as well as its SEO-related issues and solutions. The lessons in this video can be used with almost all JavaScript frameworks.

●  The Tracking Parameters used in the URL

Experts in usability and experts in conversion optimization monitor the behavior of users in various ways. Sometimes, this means tracking parameters for URLs that are on the site. This creates duplicate content issues because of linking to different URLs which contain identical content. Several approaches can be used to solve the problem.

Action Items to track parameters in URLs. Beware of using tracking parameters within the URL. Instead, monitor these parameters with JavaScript event handlers that track onclicks for links that pass the identical tracking parameters.

If you are using Google Analytics, this can be accomplished using event tracking. Always using a self-referential canonical tag is a great way to prevent numerous duplicate content problems.

●  The first Link is Priority

The Best SEO company in Singapore believes that a page with two or more hyperlinks that connect to the exact same page has been found to be a source of problems in crawling through search engines. Only the primary link is considered, and that link with a duplicate is not considered.

This topic has been debated on forums and was tested this in the year 2008 by a variety of people including Rand Fishkin and myself.

A few points worth noting:

Since 2014, Matt Cutts, former head of Google’s team for spam, said this is not an issue anymore. I’m yet to try this out again, and I’ve not seen other SEO experts test this in recent times.

When the first time this was tested and discovered as a problem it was HTML version at the time was 4.1, XHTML 1.1 was growing as was HTML 5 didn’t yet exist. Nowadays, HTML 5 exists with tags such as, and perhaps this time Google will treat links as header, sidebar, and article tags.

 

SEO Issues that arise from the Priority of the First Link

Navigation on the top bar and left sidebar typically appears first in the source code, before any main text. In addition, navigational elements within these menus typically include brief anchor text. They are generally less focused on keywords and are more design-oriented.

Links in the primary content of a webpage tend to be focused on keywords with content surrounding that support the keywords. They also are more flexible in terms of length, having larger, more precise anchor text.

This longer text can increase the number of keywords a page could be found on. But, due to first link priority issues these links are frequently ignored by search engines. Check out the Best SEO Agency In Singapore.

Action Items Priority Issues for First Link

• Take into consideration the order in which codes are displayed. Prioritize the main content over the navigation of the sidebar and top bar. CSS is a way to control the float direction in a direction in a direction from right to left or left to right, to ensure that the sidebar navigation loads following that of the primary content. The navigation on the top bar can be managed with absolute position.

 

Handling navigation on large websites

For huge websites (those that have hundreds of thousands or millions of pages) the navigation of websites can be a big problem. The site’s navigational system in categorized menus typically provides links to all pages of the website, and an XML sitemap can assist in indexing every page. Check the Best SEO Agency In Singapore.

The absence of cross-linking among content silos could result in a gap between pages. When a site is large it may be difficult to determine all possible links between pages on the product as well as the related marketing pages.

A few sections of the largest websites might not be getting all the love they require from other sites. In addition, other issues such as the first link priority or problems with JavaScript might be difficult to identify across thousands of web pages. Here are three possible solutions to these issues:

1. Delegate to different departments

The Best SEO Agency In Singapore believes that large companies tend to have a lot of websites, with many employees belonging to various departments. Different departments can be connected to various sections of the site.

It is important to ensure that everyone who is responsible for maintaining the various websites follows the same SEO guidelines and principles. Next, divide the effort to optimize navigation across the entire website.

2. Utilize Tools or Build Tools

Automation always makes manual processes more scalable. If you do not have a custom-designed tool, there might not be one tool that can identify and correct the problems mentioned above.

Tools for crawling such as Xenu, Screaming Frog, DeepCrawl, and Botify will analyze your current hyperlinks, find the problem and give detailed descriptions of the architecture of your website.

If you’re looking to visualize the structure of your site tools such as DynoMapper and PowerMapper will help you achieve this.

Tools for research on links such as Moz’s Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs, Majestic, Sistrix, LRT, and CognitiveSEO are able to determine which pages have the most backlinks from external sources. They can Then, they can add cross-links to these pages that lead to more important pages on the site.

The software we use automates this procedure of crawling a page and determining the pages that link to each other.

3. Utilize a Phased Approach

Large websites do not always have large teams to share the burden of improving pages. If there’s a shortage of resources available, you may build tools that facilitate the process.

If these tools don’t offer the assistance you require to get help, you should consider a phasing method. This involves working on one area at a given time and using an optimization plan.

It is a day-by-day procedure and could take longer but using metrics such as organic search traffic can assist you in deciding which areas to focus on first. Get in touch with us for various search engine optimization packages in Mumbai.

 

7 Important Lessons

• Customers are first. Your site’s navigation should please users first. After that, you should optimize your navigation for SEO. Don’t compromise user experience.
• Cross-linking between silos in content. The relevancy of the content between pages is crucial for ranking, which is a fact that comes naturally when you have a well-categorized hierarchy-based site structure. However, it can come with problems when there isn’t cross-linking between silos of content in which some pages are too deep or from receiving a significant volume of linking juice coming from various sources.
• Products to blogs, blogs to blogs: Write top-quality content that is informative as well as relevant for your intended viewers. If blog posts assist in making a purchase decision and you want to connect to the blog article from the particular product page(s).
• Tracking parameters: Do not use them. Instead, use an onClick event handler for websites for tracking. Always be sure to use self-referencing canonical tags.
• JavaScript links: Do not use JavaScript to write content or hyperlinks. If there’s no other way to avoid it but there are ways to work around it.
• Priority for the first link First priority: Ideally, the main content should be first. Then, there is the sidebar. This is followed by the bar at the top. Finally, take care of the footer. It is necessary in order to establish if it is an issue that is still relevant however, it’s not a bad idea to keep this approach in mind.
• Massive websites: thousands to billions of pages can be difficult to handle each of these. Give tasks to a team or automate tasks using tools, or deal with each issue one at a time. If you like this blog, be sure to check the previous blog on What Are Reciprocal Links? 8 Best Reciprocal Links Use Practices.