Left or right hand navigation

[Jon-C]

Really stupid question (I think) but does Left or right hand navigation help or hinder SEO and/or user experience?

Re-doing our site at the moment and I quite like right hand navigation as it seems to highlight our content better but not sure if it would hinder anything SEO wise - site is based on a responsive theme and side navigation is only called after content anyway so don't think it would make a difference SEO wise

Noticing more and more sites moving towards right hand nav and I quite like it, would also differentiate us in our niche as everyone else uses left hand nav

As I say probably a stupid question but thought I would ask!

[Esaky]

If it's a Portfolio of your Works - use the Left hand Navigation Menu ! Very Attractive.
The Clients will be amazed by the work you did there and published !

If you have a blog or magazine webdesign go with the right hand side ! - as Takeshi said

[TakeshiYoung]

From a web design & usability, a lot of people use right side navigation because it is close to the scroll bar on most browsers/computers.  So people can easily access the scroll bar and use the navigation without having to drag their cursor all the way across the screen.

As far as SEO, Google will generally filter out boilerplate content like navigation, but if you have a lot of dynamic content in there, it can impact SEO as far as where you have the navigation in the code (above the content or below the content).  However, regardless of where you place the sidebar in your code, you can have it appear wherever you want using CSS.

[sebastiankoch]

Hi,
It is true,right or left the only impact in your SEO could be if it gives a bad user experience and increases the bounce rate. Maybe choose wisely the links in the nav bar so they are not to many and they actually point to webpages you want to get link juice to.

In theory when someone looks at a website tends to check more the left side, specially top left. check for website heat map on google.

What needs to be more visible, the navigation bar or the content? ... depends.

I don´t think that the great majority of customers will even realize that other pages in the niche have the sidebar on the other side. That is just because you are highly involved with your website and the niche and therefore even realize that.

In other words just a mater of design.

My personal opinion, I like right side navigation, looks more modern.

Sebastian

[TomRayner]

There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers.

Certainly don't see either having any negative SEO correlation (unless one looked particularly ugly and increased bounce/exit rates substantially).

I'm with Istvan in thinking it should be a user experience consideration.

[Keszi]

Hi Teddi,

I personally like the idea of having the navigation on the right side, but we usually test it for each client. Questioning your visitors with a feedback will even give you a better overview of how they like it.

That would be my personal approach for it, but I hope it helps.

Istvan