Make Your Site Easy To Navigate
Navigation Is Very Important To Search Engines
The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly find the content they want. It can also help search engines understand what pages you think are the most important in your website.
Plan Out Your Navigation Based On Your Home Page
You should think about how visitors to your website will go from your home page to other pages that have more specific information on the product or service they are researching. If you only have a few, then it will be easier to categorize them into main subjects. Websites that have hundreds of products and services will need to dedicate a significant amount of time to organize into appropriate categories that will not only make sense to your user, but also to a search engines.
Use Breadcrumbs to Help Your Visitors
Another way to help visitors on your site is by using breadcrumbs. As with Hansel and Gretel, breadcrumbs are an easy way for a visitor to your website “see” where they are on your site in correspondence to the home page. Breadcrumbs also help search engines to see what content is related to other content, giving your pages a boost, if they are categorized correctly.
Plan For Users With the I-D-I-O-T Gene
Some users feel like if they go to their address bar and type their own version of your page names or directories, they are going to find some hidden or secret content that you have not given them access to. Stupid really, I know. But they do. So instead of greeting them with that terrible, blank, “404 Error” page, plan for these visitors. Create error pages that match your site and can redirect them to content that is actually available.
Use Sitemaps!
You can create a sitemap for users to see all the content available on your site if they get confused and can’t find what they are looking for. While search engines will crawl this page, it is really for your visitors. Create a seperate sitemap.xml page that can be submitted to Google and other search engines to let them know what pages you have available and to make sure that they pick up all the pages on your site.