Best Practice for Website Menus

[Mark_Ch]

Hi All,

I'm about to embark on the process of redesigning my website both for eye candy, user experience and SEO.

When I originally structured my menus in the day, I simply choose a word or phrase at random. No SEO, Google Keyword Tool,  or other App was used.

Question

1] Should I base my menus on rich keywords/phrases based on the metrics from Google Keyword Tools.

2] Additionally, should I include the the keywords/phrases in the URL

Example:

**        Menu** - Shoes   (URL: mydomain.com/shoes.html)Submenu - Leather Shoes   (URL: mydomain.com/leather-shoes.html)

Your words of wisdom as always would be much appreciated.

Mark

[mblsolutions]

Hi Mark

SEO MOZ have a great article giving you  insights into keyword research http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/advanced-seo-keyword-research-tips-and-ideas-14216

When we are working on a website for a client or ourselves we always do the keyword research from both a potential traffic point of view through the keyword tool as well as through a customer point of view - what they will be looking from us to buy/what problem that they want us to solve. That way we can ensure that we have the pages to take them to within the website to answer the questions that they have.

Where possible we include the keywords within the URL's as we believe that is still part of how Google is indexing the pages and how people like to see the pages. e.g if you are on a site shopping for shoes you would be confused if the url that was in the address bar had words relating to Cars. It is important that they are not overly optimized as Google at best will ignore the page and at worst penalize you for the over optimization.

Hope that helps