Ways to Improve Your Website Navigation & SEO

4 Easy Ways to Improve Your Website Navigation & SEO

Posted in December 19th, 2008
by admin in Internet Marketing

Navigation is an extremely important part of your website that helps users find the content they’re after and informs search spiders about the structure of your website. In order to improve the usability and ranking of your site, it’s important to keep both users and SEO in mind when deciding on the structure of your website.

Here are my top 4 (Google Approved) ways to improve your sites navigation:

1. Create a clear structure for your content
Unless your site only has a handful of pages, it’s a good idea to group related content under a subfolder on your site. If you have an online store for example, your products could be structured in the following manner:

/home/
/articles/
/about/
/online-shop/
/shoes/
/mens shoes/
/womens shoes/

2. Use text (not images) for navigation
Navigation is going to include some of your most important keywords, so you want Google to index these right? Google has a hard time making sense of images so make sure your site is easy to crawl by using text for navigation!

3. Use “Breadcrumb” navigation
Breadcrumb navigation helps show visitors where they are on your website and is also another chance to include important keywords on your pages. These links are usually found at the top or bottom of pages and generally look like this:

DVD Store > Comedy > Top 10 Movies

4. Use a HTML and XML sitemap
A HTML sitemap is just a simple page that contains links to all your major pages. This can be helpful to users if they become lost or are looking for specific content on your site. An XML sitemap is useful for search engines and helps inform the search spider about the structure of your site. If you don’t have an XML sitemap, visit XML Sitemaps to create one for free!
4 Easy Ways to Improve Your Website Navigation & SEO

Why major search engines changed their criteria for ranking and are it difficult to get to the top?

It has become increasingly difficult to get to the top of the major search engines in recent years as the likes of Google and Yahoo! have changed their criteria for how they rank websites. Many old techniques such as metatags and reciprocal links have lost their effectiveness. However, despite these changes, article submission remains one of the most effective ways to gain incoming links that will boost your website’s popularity among the major search engines.
While there are many other aspects to search engine optimization (SEO), article submission can be a cheap and effective way to help you get that coveted spot on the first page of the search engine results for keywords relating to your business.
First let’s look at how article marketing works in relation to improving SEO. Basically, every time a link to your website is published on another website your popularity with the search engines increases. These are known as backlinks. In every marketing article you submit to an article directory you can include a resource box with information about you or your product, and a backlinks to your website.
So, even just by submitting to article directories you are already increasing the number of backlinks to your website. However, the real value from submitting these articles is that they can be picked up and published anywhere on the web. Every time an article is published you get another backlinks to your website. If your articles are published enough times you could see your search engine page ranking rocket. Bear in mind though, that the effectiveness of your campaign will depend on where the articles appear. A backlinks from a website that itself has a high search engine page ranking will carry more weight than a backlinks from a site with a poor ranking.
Keywords vs quality
carefully choosing keywords is an essential part of article marketing for a number of reasons. First, you want your articles to be easily found in article directories. If they remain buried under similar articles they will never be published on other websites and your efforts will have been wasted.
Also, you want your articles to get good results on the search engines themselves. If your articles find their way onto the front pages of the search engines you will increase exposure to your website or product, and increase your reputation as an article writer.
However, there is more to successful article marketing than keywords. There has been an ongoing difference of opinion among SEO experts as to whether the quality of articles can be sacrificed for the sake of high keyword density within the text. While it is important to put keywords in the text to help with SEO, quality content is king when it comes to article marketing.
The main aim of article marketing is to get your articles published on as many websites as possible. Quality content is at a premium on the internet so if you can provide good articles that people want to read you will be successful. If you stuff your articles with keywords websites will not publish them and readers will rarely read beyond the first paragraph. So, keep keywords to about two per every 100 words of text and do not let them disrupt the flow and the meaning of the article.
Know your neighbor
the most successful article marketers are the ones who gain a reputation as experts in their chosen field, so try to find your niche and work to your strengths. If you write authoratively and enthusiastically about a subject that you know about you are much more likely to attract readers.
If, for example, you have a website that sells Mac software you could write about new releases and trends in this field. However, you could also boost your profile by becoming involved in the general online Mac community by posting on forums or even creating your own blog. These can provide extra opportunities for creating backlinks and driving traffic to your website, and as you become better known in your field you will find your articles will be more used more often and more widely.
New Web 2.0 social bookmaking websites are also giving article marketers new opportunities for improving SEO and increasing traffic to their website. If you come up with an article you think could be very popular on the web you could publish it on your website and submit it to websites like Digg and Reddit. If it gains popularity on these sites it could go viral and bring thousands of hits to your site.
Article marketing offers excellent opportunities to promote your product while improving the SEO of your website. Even if you do not have the time or the will to write articles yourself, you should look into having a freelance writer doing the job for you.
For more useful tips & hints, please browse for more information at our website:- www.article-promotion-course.com www.articlemarketing.infozabout.com, Why major search engines changed their criteria for ranking and are it difficult to get to the top?

Are you looking for more traffic and viewers for your pages?

Well, if you’re writing or selling anything on the internet, this has an obvious answer…

Traffic to your pages is really all about having high rankings in the search engines. What this means to you is that any prospect typing your keyword(s) into any search engine’s search bar will be served your link on the first page of results (hopefully).

To direct traffic your way and to generate sales, you’re going to have to do some sharp analysis of the quality, organization and topic relevance of your website pages.

So let’s start with a quick overview of just five simple ways to start ranking higher using better search engine optimization (SEO) tactics. First thing’s first…

1. Prepare An Outline For Your Page Content Before You Write It-

For website success, you MUST stay tightly organized and be very resourceful. Search Google using keywords that pertain to your niche and look for sites that have these features. When a site looks clean and orderly, make sure you’ve got the tools in place to help you validate your suspicions. For instance:

Download Sparky which is Alexa’s toolbar gadget for your Firefox browser. Sparky installs a non obtrusive menu at the bottom right of your browser revealing the Alexa rankings (traffic trends, reach meter & traffic rank) of the pages that you are currently viewing. “What, you don’t work with Firefox?!”

Firefox is a browser that’s incredibly useful for online marketers because there’s many widgets n’ tools made compatible with the browser to assist you in your marketing research.

2. Be Niche Specific-

The more you can carve out a little niche space within a larger industry, the better your chances of achieving higher ranks for that particular market. It’s equally important to find a niche that’s large enough to be profitable for your time & efforts though. Research is the key here and I’ll explore this subject with you at another time.

3. Estimate Your Search Traffic-

One of the most important aspects of SEO is knowing just how much traffic may be searching for your particular niche. Several good keyword tools are available to help you determine which keywords you’ll need to target throughout your webpages to get higher ranks. Keyword Spy is an advanced research engine from the leaders in keyword research technology. Increase your revenues by finding the most profitable keywords. Know your competitor’s online marketing strategies by spying on their choice of keywords! I won’t build a website without this tool.

4. Use Compelling Keywords-

Use the most powerful keywords in the title of your pages, in the meta tags and scatter them as well throughout your pages. Your composition should feature about one to two uses of the particular keyword per paragraph. Aim for a keyword density between two to four percent per page and no greater or search engines may consider it spam & over promotional.

5. Develop A Long Term Plan-

Building a marketing plan & pages without a clearly defined end purpose in sight is like driving in the night without the headlights on. You need to have a clear set of goals your site has been created for and to achieve these goals you you have to put a business plan together to give direction and to achieve your goals.