Search engines cannot follow graphic navigation links (like those often found in dynamic pages that incorporate flash animation and/or Java scripting).  As such, it is important that each page of the site include text navigation (words rather than pictures) that link to every other page of the site.  Text navigation is not only important to the search engines, but to site visitors as well.  Creating search engine friendly and user friendly text navigation throughout the site will not only impact a site's ranking, but also the conversion rate.

   

 General Guidelines 

• Site must have text navigation.
• Text links must use keywords. 
• The page being linked to should be optimized for the keyword term used in the anchor text of the link.  For example:
  • A link on the home page using the text "catering services" should link to the Catering Services page of the site, which would be optimized for the term "catering services".
  • A link on the Catering Services page using the text "Mexican Restaurant in Jacksonville, FL" should link to the home page, which would be optimized for the term "Mexican Restaurant Jacksonville, FL".
• Place text links to every page of the site at the bottom of each page (commonly referred to as site footers).

The importance of internal links is often underestimated.  Here's the bottom line:  if a home page is optmized for "Mexican Restaurant", there should be links back to the home page from each of the other pages of the site using the term "Mexican Restaurant" as the text for the link.  The same is true for other pages of the same site.  A page optimized for the term "catering" should have links to it from every other page of the site that use "catering" as the text for the link.  This is further illustrated on our Example Site.