In Optimzing Web Site Structure Through Architecture I mentioned five methods for internal site navigation.
- Your “navigation menu”
- Your HTML Sitemap page
- Cross-promotional margin links
- Links embedded in copy
- Site search
That was not entirely complete. For example, I’ve visited some Web sites that use floating navigation tools to help people move around the site. Not very search friendly, of course, but it could enhance the experience for some users. Another alternative is to use frames (which is not as search UNfriendly as many people believe). A mixture of frames and CSS-based templates can actually provide a very robust navigation tool that is crawlable.
But I want to talk about a topic I raised the other day in Architecting Web Sites - Design From The SEO Perspective. I’m thinking of the architectural persona concept I introduced.
In essence, your core navigation structure is your archictural persona. On Web sites that use two or more equally robust navigation systems, you are dealing with multiple architectural personas. An architectural persona does not have to be crawlable but you can make a secondary (or more) persona that helps search engines view your site in a different way.
There are a few benefits to using multiple architectural personas.
- Since internal link anchor text may be passed from page to page, you CAN associate your pages with multiple inbound link anchor text.
- Since your two navigation systems have to be maintained separately, you can introduce people to your deep content through separate entry portals that group your pages by different topical structures.
- You can promote one navigation system for one search engine and another navigation system for a different search engine
- You can associate one navigation system with your internal site search tool
There are other benefits, too. Drawbacks include increased overhead and maintenance. You have to create robust content pages that search engines will index without question. You have to change two or more navigation templates every time you update your site content.
So there is a tradeoff. Nonetheless, large complex sites can take advantage of the semantic flexibility offered by the use of multiple architectural personas. Spammers can, too, unfortunately, but spammers do tend to be sloppy and mechanical. I’ve never been penalized for using multiple architectural personas that added substantial value to the user experience
. Anyone can create crawl pages, and search engines don’t necessarily object to crawl pages as long as they don’t become spammy or deceptive. But you still have the extra overhead with crawl pages whereas they don’t offer much value to your visitors. Your primary navigation would have to be pretty bad for anyone to prefer using a simple crawl page to navigate your site. I’m about to leave for a three-day weekend, but I’ll discuss this topic more in the future.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
don 09.12.08 at 12:00 am
Question regarding navigation links:
If you have a category page with a menu linking to several sibling categories, and each of these sibling category pages were named ( name is also used for anchor text ) black widgets, blue widgets, orange widgets, white widgets, etc ( it’s actually a 3 word phrase, so there’s 4 words in the anchor text: color + 3 word phrase). Is there a chance it could be flagged for keyword stuffing? The categories were named, in fact, with no SEO in mind by a different person, and I feel a little bullied feeling like I should change them just for Google. They don’t look too bad, and according to surveys the visitors like the navigation.
I could change the names to simply say black, blue, etc but then just about _all_ internal links referencing those pages would be changed and a simply one-word anchor text isn’t very descriptive of the sibling categories. It might also look a little weird to the visitors in some instances. These sibling categories are also ranking very well, I think the anchor text links are playing a role in this, although the primary category page ranks horribly for the 3 word phrase that’s repeated so often via links in its content.
I couldn’t find much information on this particular subject. I did find one or two sites discussing it, however I’m still a little confused and not sure what action I should take. I’d rather not do too much code hacking, considering that it doesn’t appear to be affecting the visitors.
Michael Martinez 09.12.08 at 8:08 am
I would consider it to be extremely UNLIKELY that such a navigation arrangement would be identified for keyword stuffing. Is there a “chance”? I suppose so — in the most minimal probability. But I’ve never seen a site be penalized, filtered, or banned because it repeated keywords in navigation.
Now, if you were using images for your navigation links and your ALT= text looked something like “keyword keyword keyword keyword keyword keyword …” then I think that would raise some algorithmic eyebrows.
Likewise, if you just inject random lines of text into your page that look like:
keyword keyword keyword keyword keyword keyword
That might cause the search engine indexers to run some heuristic analyses and see if maybe you’re stuffing keywords.
Keyword stuffing is egregious, open, blatent, usually off-topic (or, rather, it washes out any one particular topic), and quite obvious.
If you’re not certain you’re keyword stuffing, then you probably are NOT keyword stuffing.
What it really comes down to is: what works for your visitors? If that’s all you’re trying to achieve, you don’t need to worry.
Unless you’re trying to reach people who want to find pages that are stuffed with random bits of gibberish and links to porn sites. That kind of content tends to raise algorithmic eyebrows.
Notice that I have no fear of repeating words many times on this blog. SEO Theory has never been banned, filtered, or penalized that I am aware of. The search engines are pretty good at figuring out whether I’m trying to play tricks on them with my repetition.
don 09.12.08 at 9:58 am
Thanks man. I appreciate your insight. If you haven’t noticed ( from my ip ) I’ve been all over your blog for the past 2 months reading up as many posts as I can. hehe.
I’ve got one other thing on my mind, tho, I don’t expect you to answer, it isn’t like im paying you for your advice.
The site in question has a strong pyramid architecture. If that’s the proper description for what I’m about to describe:
Home page only links to primary category pages. Primary category pages in turn link to sibling categories and also links back to the home page. Sibling categories link to products as well as the primary category and the home page. Then I cross promote related and complimentary products and categories ( such as accessories ). So each page is strongly themed. My idea was to give Google a clear indication of the most important pages with the home page having the most links, primary categories having the second most links, etc. Some say that this architecture isn’t optimal for PageRank distribution. Do you agree? So far the results have seemed good.
I think I remember reading a post by you that said there is nothing wrong with this type of architecture.
Traffics Pain 10.10.08 at 11:49 am
I use this system many times without any problem at all, particularly when breaking down navigation to be location specific.
i.e my category page may well be a main entry page for blue widgets from which I have only one or two paragraphs of introduction and this will lead to london blue widgets, birmingham blue wisgets, new york blue widgets. It is accurate and makes perfect sense and above all helps return the appropriate page in the serps.
Of course this only works if the page itself does not look crammed and ugly and spammy to the user so it will often depend on how many sub categories you will have. This part is just common sense.
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