Footer Navigation

[Nick0r]

Currently I have tab system at the top of a site whereby the main content sections are linked to with 'tab' images (with text on top of them using CSS), but there is only enough room to fit 1 word in per tab.

I'm planning to re-create this navigation in pure text form in the footer as to point better anchor text towards these pages. Could there be any pitfalls to doing this? (e.g two links to the same pages but w/ different anchor text)

[edited by: Nick0r at 12:13 pm (utc) on July 14, 2007]

[Brett_Tabke]

Oh, footers are generally a "banner blind" spot if done in the traditional manner. However, if you make it something out of the ordinary, people will look there and use it. There are a lot of people who use footers successfully for some "lesser" navigation. If your site gets enough traffic to test it - why not do some a/b dueling page tests and see which one performs the best?

[Nick0r]

Brett, I was doing this for both usability but primarily with search engines in mind. My 1-word tabs at the top of my page (containing links to my most important sections) aren't providing ideal anchor texts to the end pages, however, if I re-created that navigation in full text in the footer I was hoping that would pass some anchor text weight on.

[dickbaker]

NickOr, if a site I'm working on uses images, javascript rollovers, etc in the navigation bar, then I put plain old HTML links at the bottom of the page.

I know that the search engines can follow the links in the navigation bar. I just figure that anything that makes it easier for the search bots is good.

Or maybe it's just superstition.

[Nick0r]

I see. And what would you do if you had text (with css background images as tabs) but you could only fit one word in each tab e.g "Stories" rather than the full anchor text of "Widget Stories"

[dickbaker]

I'd put "Widget Stories" in the footer navigation. Again, maybe it's just superstition, though.

[Nick0r]

Interesting.

I may well give it a go dickbaker, thanks for your opinion.