Aug 24 2008
For Good SEO Use Text Link Site Navigation
I have been to a lot of really nice looking sites that have very little text anywhere and rely heavily on graphics to get their message across. Unless your website is one of those very few that are known by name, then I would suggest making your website less graphic intensive and more text based, especially when it comes to managing your SEO.
Text based site linking also known as anchor linking is the best way to go when setting up your site structure. Yes it may not be a visually appealing as a site with slick graphics, but unless you are a true expert at GUI you will probably be doing more harm to your search rankings than good. Bot and spiders don’t read images. Yes they do read image names and image “alt” tags but that just isn’t as good as a text based link.
My experience has show that a text based menu along the left side of your site is usually the most SEO friendly format for onsite linking. Text based links can also be used in the text body of your site. When you have a sentence about a particular subject that your website covers, use that keyword as a link to the inner page of your site that covers that topic. Google especially likes this and will take the words on either side of keyword into account adding strength to that text link.
I also recommend placing text link to the major inner pages of your website at the bottom of your site. Have these topical links on bottom of each of your inner pages as well. Finally, make your site map a text link based map that is only one link away from your index page.
By using text based links, the spiders will be able to follow your navigation with ease and you will find your SEO efforts working better.
