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Optimized Site Navigation

Need help with the best navigation for my site

         

coldcash

1:27 am on Nov 5, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I have a small website consisting of about 20 pages. All of the individuals pages are related to the main category. For instance, lets say I have a site about tattoos, all the pages would be specifically dedicated to different types of tattoo design categories (tribal designs, animal designs, angel designs, etc.) My question is should I use an include based type of navigation where you can get to any page from any other page at any time? Or should I only have the full naviagtion on the default page, and have users use a 'HOME' link or back button to get back to the navigation (default page). I am interested in what the search engines (in particular GOOGLE) would like to see most. Thanks!

Big_Balou

6:39 am on Nov 5, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



The first thing to think of would be your visitors.

How would you feel if you visited a site where you had to use the back button to get to another page? (Granted some people do use the back button to navigate even well designed sites)

If you make it easy for your visitors then the search engines will like it.

That said is there any way you can perhaps catagorize the pages into a handful of subsections, ie. animal tattos, religious tattos, etc. ,then set up a pages for each of those catagories that leads to the individual pages instead of doing one page that has all the links? This would let you have links on each page to the sub-cats without having an overabundance of links.

I admit that this complicates things a bit but IMO helps with the flow of the site.

Someone else may come along who has a different opinion but always think about the usability to the end user(surfer).

Here is a pointer to a recent discussion [webmasterworld.com ] .

By using the site search function on this board you'll find a lot more.

By the way Welcome to Webmaster World!

Hardwood Guy

11:40 am on Nov 5, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Hey I'm a newbie here too and learning a great deal...thanks guys! I've included a navigation bar at the bottom of every page I have on two sites I have and people love it. I'm glad this has been mentioned because I have added pages and need to include the new ones in that area.