Main Navigation choice affects Usability, PageRank and Search Returns

The fewer the better?

[KMxRetro]

Hi all,
This encompasses many things (SEO, Design, Usability for three) so I thought I'd put it in this forum....

My site (new version that I'm designing now) will be split up in several ways - it's a console games site, by the way.

The sections will be laid out like this (kindof following the whole "themes" method of promotion):-

Home
--- Format Hub
------ Reviews
------ News
------ Charts
------ Release Dates

etc etc. Each format will have its own hub, and each hub will have sub pages as above.

My question (finally) is this.....My main navigation (left side) will contain links to the format hubs. Would it be best to show links to the sub-pages as well, or only show them when a user hits one of the hubs?

Would showing all of them detract or add to search engine listings or PageRank or is there anything else I'm missing by having 20+ nav links?

Thanks all,

[tedster]

To get a real answer on usability, I'd suggest mocking up both styles and actually testing by giving subjects a few tasks to perform. My guess is that showing the sub-pages would lower usability. My experience says that too many choices often means that more visitors make no choice at all!

However, I'd suggest testing.

Fewer links from the Home Page would mean that your top level pages each get passed more PR from the Home Page. But then your sub-pages would get no PR at all from the Home Page. However, then those top level pages themselves do pass PR for the subpages they link to, so that would even things out a bit.

Still, having all the links on the Home Page would boost your lower level pages a bit more, and having fewer would boost your top level pages more. The difference is likely to be subtle, and easy to counteract if you can get other inbound links to internal pages.