Best way to optomize navigation (use keywords?)

Does it make sense to use keywords as navigation items?

[anthony522]

I have been trying to consume as much SEO tips as I can recently and one of the more interesting suggestions was using keywords as your main navigation items.

This suggestion got me rethinking how I often develop sites (Who We Are, What We Do, Contact Us, Our Work). These links usually just take people to pages with a bunch of information about what they will find inside. Now I'm thinking maybe it makes more sense to just have a longer bit of navigation for the site with links to things that are normally contained inside these sections. For example rather then having a general "News" link maybe have navigation that links to press releases, the company in the news, etc.

Now that this door in my head is open, I'm wondering what people have been doing with any type of success. Does it still make sense to have "container" links that then explains whats in the section and offers more links after a user clicks on them or do people reccomend just linking directly to what is inside with nice keyworded link?

Thanks in advance.

[specter]

or do people reccomend just linking directly to what is inside with nice keyworded link?

SEs want keywords.They ignore "descriptions".
Make nice keyworded links.

Regards

[anthony522]

Do you have an opinion on setting up navigation?

Do you think the "container" method still is valid or do you lean towards nothing but keyworded links?

[specter]

I think that good keyworded links work fine and make more relevance to your site;moreover SEs spiders assign lot of importance to them for the rank calculation.
The link "box" instead,doesn't have any relevance to the eyes of the SEs,unless than you use keyword in them.
So,the choice is your.
But between a site that contains a lot of internal links missing of relevant text/keywords ,and a site that,instead,has good,keyworded internal links wich one do you believe a SE spider chooses?

[anthony522]

That is where I was leaning. I think it also would help to eliminate any guessing as to what people will find in sections like, "What We Do" as well.