hairycoo - 8:57 am on Oct 18, 2004 (gmt 0)

You will want to use your "money words" at the deepest levels, not the highest. Because? That's where you want your visitors from SE's to land. They should land at the topics that are most relevant to their specific query in stead of landing at the front page and then having to work their way down into the site.

Agreed. The high traffic keywords I am talking about are not money keywords, they refer to users who are at the beginning of their shopping cycle. If they land on one of the sub-themes they can drill down to more specific topics, and that's where my money keywords are.

Thanks Claus for the suggestions on navigation. I think option 1 is not very usable because it would result in a large number of links. I will have some embedded links which will be very important, and don't want them to be overlooked. I know users look at content first and ignore navigation but too many links are noise in the background and can distract.

So far 2 or 3 look like they would work, I have issues with drop down menus. They make life easier for me, but not necessarily for my users.

Breadcrumbs, sitemap and search will all be there. Speaking of, where would breadcrumbs go best? Steve Krug says top right if I'm not mistaken but that corner is often overlooked, is it not?

I had read the wichita articles on structure and menus but while they offer valuable info, they're still a bit vague. Your suggestion is just what I was thinking of so that confirms what I thought would work best. Thanks Claus.