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Link Component: Links and Navigation
This section examines how to build links that search engine spiders can follow.
A good navigation structure makes it easier for search engines spiders and users
to browse your web site. It's easy to understand because it's just
good common sense. If it is easy for users to navigate your site, they will most
likely return. If it is easy for search engines to follow your links, it is more
likely that they will index many of your web pages. The more web pages you have
indexed, the more likely it is that one of them will be found in a search, thus
leading a visitor to your web site. How many of your web pages are indexed by
a particularly search engine is called "search engine saturation".
Use hyperlinks that search engines can follow
Search engine spiders can't follow every kind of link that webmasters use. In
fact, the only kind of hyperlinks that you can be certain all search engine spiders
can and will follow are standard text-based links.
In HTML code, text-based links are written like this:
<
a href="http://www.seoeffect.com">Link text</a>
The link will look like this on a web page: Link text
All other forms of links can pose a problem for search engine spiders.
Tip: Use a html editor
If you are using a WYSIWYG editor or content management system, it will
usually output the correct HTML code for you when you insert a text link.
You can verify
that it is indeed a text link by highlighting the link text in your browser.
If you can highlight it letter by letter like most other text on a web
page, and you can copy and paste it into a text editor like notepad or
Word, then you
should be safe.
Image maps and navigation buttons as main menu?
Sometimes designers want to use graphics for navigational links. Two common ways
of making graphical links are very different:
- image maps and
- navigation buttons.
Image maps can have different areas of one image linking to different web pages
frequently used to build page elements like top and side navigation bars or country
maps. Most search engines do not read image maps, so you should always add additional
text-based links on each page for search engine spiders to follow. The text-based
links will also be good for visitors who do not use a graphics-capable browser
or visitors who surf with graphics turned off to save bandwidth.
Navigation buttons are single images that each link to a specific web page. Most
search engines spiders will follow navigation button links. However, if you want
to be absolutely sure that all search engines can and will follow all of your
links, we still recommend adding pure text-based links in addition to any kind
of graphical links. In addition, text links can have keywords within the hyperlink
while navigation button links cannot.
See also the Text Component section.
Flash, Macromedia and Java Applets
Flash, Shockwave, and Java Applets have something in common: They all require
the user to have a special program installed on their computer to open and play
the files. Most new browsers come with the necessary programs installed to play
the most common file types. However, search engine spiders usually do not open
such files.
We recommend that you do not build your navigation links using any of these techniques.
If you do, you should only serve the high-tech version of your web site to users
that have the right plug-ins installed, and have a low-tech version ready for
all other users. The low-tech version should include regular text-based links,
which will work well with search engine spiders as well as users that do not
have these plug-ins installed.
Tip: use a sitemap
If you are using techniques to present navigational links that require the user
to have a certain plug-in installed, you can add standard navigation text-links
for the search engine spiders to follow in the footer of each web page. Also,
sitemaps with a complete overview of all pages with links can help both your
visitor and the spider.
Java Script and DHTML
Search engine spiders do not read JavaScript!
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