Link Structure Must Be Carefully Planned

First determine your Main Navigational Links. Using a template will help you ensure that you have your main navigational links on every page. These links will generally be graphical links made out of images, not text links. They should either go across the top of the page or down the left hand side. We recommend a maximum of 10 main navigational links. A few more won't hurt, but try to realize your visitors need to find what they need and find it quickly.

After your main links, you may need to break your site down into sub categories or Sub Navigational Links. Your site may be divided into several sections; each of these sections would be accessible by a main link. From the main link, the section would break down into its own set of navigational links. For instance, the "About Us" section may be composed of several sub pages including "Mission Statement," "President," "History," etc. This second-level list of pages is called sub navigation. Generally, if your Main navigation goes across the top of the page, then your Sub navigation would go down the left of the page. If your Main navigation goes down the left, then your Sub navigation would go across the top.

Your second-level directories may lead to third-level and even fourth-level directories, especially if you have a product catalog that you need to organize by categories. The main point to remember is that if your visitors can easily find what they are looking for, chances are that search engine spiders can also find their way to all your pages. When trying to achieve organic listings, you must try to get most o fyour pages spidered and put into the search engine database. This is why navigation is so very important.

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