The navigation of a website is
important in helping visitors quickly find the content they want. It can also
help search engines understand what content the webmaster thinks is important.
Although Google's search results are provided at a page level, Google also
likes to have a sense of what role a page plays in the bigger picture of the
site. All sites have a home or "root" page, which is usually the most
frequented page on the site and the starting place of navigation for many
visitors. Unless your site has only a handful of pages, you should think about
how visitors will go from a general page (your root page) to a page containing
more specific content. Do you have enough pages around a specific topic area
that it would make sense to create a page describing these related pages (e.g.
root page -> related topic listing -> specific topic)? Do you have
hundreds of different products that need to be classified under multiple
category and subcategory pages?
/
/about/
/articles/
/news/
/2010/
/2011/
/2012/
/practice-guides/
/1900-1949/
/1950-1999/
/2000-present/
/shop/
/modern/
/autographs/
/rookie-cards/
/star-cards/
/vintage/
/autographs/
/hall-of-farmer-cards/
A sitemap (lower-case)
is a simple page on your site that displays the structure of your website, and usually
consists of a hierarchical listing of the pages on your site. Visitors may
visit this page if they are having problems finding pages on your site. While
search engines will also visit this page, getting good crawl coverage of the
pages on your site, it's mainly aimed at human visitors.
An XML Sitemap
(upper-case) file, which you can submit through Google's Webmaster Tools, makes it easier for Google to discover the pages on your
site. Using a Sitemap file is also one way (though not guaranteed) to tell
Google which version of a URL you'd prefer as the canonical one (e.g. http://brandonsbaseballcards.com/
or http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/; more on what's a preferred
domain). Google helped create the open source Sitemap
Generator script to
help you create a Sitemap file for your site. To learn more about Sitemaps, the
Webmaster Help Center
provides a useful guide to Sitemap files.
Good practices for site navigation
• Create a naturally flowing hierarchy - Make it as easy as
possible for users to go from general content to the more specific content they
want on your site. Add navigation pages
when it makes sense and
effectively work these into your internal link structure.
Avoid:
• creating complex webs
of navigation links, e.g. linking every page on your site to every other page
• going overboard with
slicing and dicing your content (it takes twenty clicks to get to deep content)
• Use mostly text for navigation - Controlling most of the
navigation from page to page on your site through text links makes it easier
for search engines to crawl and understand your site. Many users also prefer
this over other approaches, especially on some devices that might not handle
Flash or JavaScript.
Avoid:
• having a navigation
based entirely on drop-down menus, images, or animations (many, but not all,
search engines can discover such links on a site, but if a user can reach all
pages on a site via normal text links, this will improve the accessibility of
your site; more on how
Google deals with non-text files)
• Use "breadcrumb" navigation - A breadcrumb is a row
of internal links at the top or bottom
of the page that allows
visitors to quickly navigate back to a previous section or the root page. Many
breadcrumbs have the most general page (usually the root page) as the first, left-most
link and list the more specific sections out to the right.
Put an HTML sitemap page on your site, and use an XML Sitemap file
- A
simple sitemap page with links to all of the pages or the most important pages
(if you have hundreds or thousands) on your site can be useful. Creating an XML
Sitemap file for your site helps ensure that search engines discover the pages
on your site.
Avoid:
• letting your HTML
sitemap page become out of date with broken links
• creating an HTML
sitemap that simply lists pages without organizing them, for example by subject
• Consider what happens when a user removes part of your URL - Some users might navigate
your site in odd ways, and you should anticipate this. For example, instead of
using
the breadcrumb links on
the page, a user might drop off a part of the URL in the hopes of
finding more general
content. He or she might be visiting
http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/2008/upcoming-baseball-card-shows.htm,
but
then enter
http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/2008/ into the browser's address
bar, believing that this
will show all news from 2008. Is your site prepared to show content in
this situation or will
it give the user a 404 ("page not found" error)? What about moving up
a
directory level to
http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/?
• Have a useful 404 page - Users will occasionally come to a page that
doesn't exist on your site, either by following a broken link or typing in the
wrong URL. Having a custom
404 page that kindly
guides users back to a working page on your site can greatly improve a user's experience.
Your 404 page should probably have a link back to your root page and could also
provide links to popular or related content on your site. Google provides a 404
widget that you can
embed in your 404 page to automatically populate it with many useful features. You
can also use Google Webmaster Tools to find the sources of URLs causing
"not found" errors.
Avoid:
• allowing your 404
pages to be indexed in search engines (make sure that your webserver is
configured to give a 404
HTTP status code when
non-existent pages are requested)
• providing only a vague
message like "Not found", "404", or no 404 page at all
• using a design for
your 404 pages that isn't consistent with the rest of your site
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