5 Tips to Design an SEO Friendly Navigation for Your Website
Creating a webpage and hosting only is simply not enough if you aim to monetize from your website. You need to focus on making your site search engine friendly. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of improving the visibility of your site for search engines.
Here you will learn some tips from expert Alabama website design builders on how to improve online visibility through an SEO friendly navigation feature.
Designing an SEO Friendly Navigation
An effort to make your site search engine friendly should start with the navigation feature. Improving the navigation feature will result in an enhanced user experience. It will lead to reduced bounce rate and improved time online users stay on the site.
Before we inform about user-friendly navigation features, you should remember that they are not rules set in stone. They are guidelines to improve the site’s navigation features. You need to try different features through trial and error to find out which features work the best for your online users.
1. Image Carousals
Does your website consist of a lot of different features? If so, you should consider providing easy navigation by using the image carousel feature. Image carousels can streamline website navigation by organizing information in a dynamic UX.
Image carousels provide an appealing graphical departure from the rest of the textual content. The carousel is a great way to display product offerings, featured blog contents, and other information in limited web space. With carousals, you can place multiple products or information in a single space.
Image carousels can be displayed using different UI design elements. You can display the carousel in the form of a series of click-through images as in the AU LIT FINES LINEN website.
The image carousel can also be in the form of cool animation. You can visit the Biboun website to see a sample of an animated carousel website feature.
However, you can easily go wrong if you don’t do the design part right. Here are some guidelines when adding an image carousel feature on your website.
- Use clear images and text that displays well on both small and large screens
- Include no more than seven frames in the image carousel.
- Indicate how many frames in a carousel using a bullet or text
- Incorporate navigation controls in the carousal
- Make links buttons large enough to allow users to decipher clickable links
- Continue cycling at the last frame
- Don’t use auto-forwarding on mobiles
2. Organize the Information
No matter how great the product offerings, your website won’t attract customers if the products are not organized properly. You need to organize the information in proper categories. This will improve customer engagement and also SEO for the site.
Consider organizing the products in subcategories. You should add search features in all the categories and sub-categories. This will help the users get to the required page quickly. The search results page should contain no more than 10 products on a screen. Moreover, you should allow users to filter the search results according to different attributes such as price, popularity, date, and others.
After your website is designed, you should check the analytics regularly. Find out whether customers are staying longer or clicking back once they visit your site. Analyzing the analytics using Google Analytics, Finetza or other analytic tools will help you know what design elements best capture attention of online users.
3. Add Internal Links
You should add important links to all the web pages. Adding links will make it easy for online users to quickly access main pages such as FAQ, checkout cart, About US page, Contact US, Terms, and Policies, and other pages.
Moreover, adding links will also optimize your website for search engines. But remember to limit the use of internal links. Adding too many links will create confusion that will result in reduced time spent on site and increased bounce rate. This will have a negative effect on the site’s search ranking.
A Huntsville website design company with expertise in SEO can effectively place internal links to boost rankings. The company can place only the useful links that point to important page elements using the right keywords.
Cross-linking pages can help strengthen the SO of your site. This involves linking similar pages that help users navigate to the correct category. This also prevents web pages to become lost in the silos. Users can drill down to the appropriate page without having to spend hours navigating your site.
4. Consider Fixed Scrolling Bars
Fixed scrolling bars can improve the navigation of the site. The common practice of limiting navigation to the nav bar on the sides is not appropriate. A better option is fixed scrolling bars that make it easy for the users to go from one point on a page to another.
With fixed scrolling bars, the navigation objects remain at a fixed location usually on the side of the top of the website. The fixed nav bar follows the users as they scroll across the website. The result is easy user navigation that will have a positive effect on your site’s search ranking.
5. Use Menus to Organize Content
Using menus and sub-menus can help organize the site’s content. If you have lots of content, you should use a giant drop-down menu. The menu can span several columns. This will lead to easier navigation for online users.
Large menus can also improve the SEO of your site. This is a good way of creating silos and grouping keywords. Silo architecture groups similar pages adding an extra layer of convenience to your site’s navigation. This also makes your site understandable for the search engine bots. The result is both increased customer attention and improved online visibility.
In the end, you should not overdo the navigation design element. Consider keeping the user navigation simple for the users. Always keep the needs of the users in mind when designing the navigation element of the website.
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