Various Website Navigation Structure with a Peek into their Search Engine Friendliness
Monday, October 5th, 2009Websites that are hassle-free in navigation are in good books of search engine spiders. Navigation is among the fundamental features that are considerable to tag a website as search engine friendly. Search engines index a site depending on the degree of ease in navigation. Therefore, websites with an easily crawlable navigation structure rank higher in search engine result pages.
Navigation structure is of many types all of which are not in tune with search engine crawlers. Simple text-based navigation is more search engine friendly than other types as it allows including keywords in the webpage content. Websites with keyword-based navigation are efficiently navigable for search engines. In addition, the following are the best navigation types with a peek into their search engine friendly nature.
JavaScript is readable but not analyzable for search engine bots. As a result, they cannot follow the links that are embedded in the JavaScript code and crawl the sites from cover to cover. If JavaScript based navigation is your choice, make sure to check if search engine bots can navigate the site despite the blocking of the scripts by user settings. Using the html noscript tag with this navigation structure is recommended.
Websites with flash-based navigation structure is not indexable by search engine spiders in normal circumstances, if the HTML alternative is not provided. The .swf format of flash that does not contain the code embedded in .fla files is the reason for the inability of search engines to read the flash code. Only decompiling the flash movie enables search engine crawlers to navigate the flash-based content. Replacing flash video on a webpage with SWFObject is recommended in such cases.
A website if designed with image-based navigation structure is search engine friendly. Though image links are crawlable, this sort of navigation mars the ability to build keyword-based navigation structure. JavaScript is often used to link interactive images for smooth navigation. Make sure that links behind the images should not be JavaScript based. Using Alt attribute for image-based navigation is a must.
Most often, JavaScript is used for implementation of the sliding menus to enhance interactivity as well as functionality of the navigational links. Make sure using the CSS/JS hybrid navigation that search engines can follow these navigational links. Be sure of placing the JavaScript code in external files not in page code. A pull-down or drop-down menu saves screen space on websites with a multi-level navigational structure. Using CSS and XHTML style sheets is a recommendation to present pull-down or drop-down menu navigation. Including a secondary form of navigation is a must to make following links to the website easy for search engine spiders.