A navigation is one of the key ways to keep users on your website and to keep them engaged with your content. The easier it is to navigate your website, the longer they will stay and explore the content. An optimised navigation is also essential to help search engine robots crawl your pages and index them faster. By having navigation structure that is logical an easy to follow, users can get to the pages they want to see faster and access the information they need.

Optimizing navigation can be done through the following:

• Setting up a universal navigation menu – either at the top or at the side of page. This acts as hub that can quickly direct visitors to the part of the site that they want to visit.
• Avoid drop down menus when possible as they are not compatible with some tablet devices and always keep drop down menus in HTML.
• If you have plenty of items on a single page, add a filter that helps users sort the content into categories.
• Ensure that your navigation options are worded correctly and make it easy for users to identify where they are headed on the page.
• Always make sure your visitor knows where they are in the navigation by drawing attention to their position on the menu.
• Do not overload your menus with options as this will confuse visitors, list all the major sections, and let the navigation work from there.

When optimizing navigation always remember to evaluate as you work to ensure your navigation strategy is working properly and not linking incorrectly.

Search Engine Optimization explained.

Keyword Assessment | Meta Data | Webmaster Tools | Google Analytics | Monthly Reporting | Robots.txt | .htaccess | Favicon | Site Map | Search Engines | Google Maps | Forms and E-mails | Footer Link | Google Search Engine | Picture Tagging | Directory Page | Social Media | Heading Tags | Indexed Pages | Robots | Sitemap | HTML Errors | Search Engine Errors | Broken Links | Pages and Content | Search Engines | Picture Tagging | Flash and iFrames | Hierarchy | Forms and Emails | Add Media | Static URLs | Descriptive URLs | Duplicate Content | Plagiarism Check | Positive Content | Negative Content | Character Coding | Downloadable Files | Optimize Graphics | Optimize Navigation | Incoming Links | Outgoing Links | Page Content | Meta Data | Rich Content | Reduce Bounce Rate | Social Media | Analyze Competitors | Website Security | 3rd Party Tracking