Site Navigation

[stageagent]

Hello, I have some questions about best practices with site navigation & internal linking. I'm currently assisting aplossoftware.com with its navigation. The site has about 200 pages total. They currently have a very sparse header with a lot of links in the footer.  The three most important keywords they want to rank for are nonprofit accounting software, church accounting software and file 990 online.

1. What are your thoughts about including a drop down menu in the header for the different products? (they have 3 main products). This would allow us to include a few more links in the header and give more real estate to include full keywords in anchor text.

2. They have a good blog with content that gets regularly updated. Currently it's linked in the footer and gets a tiny amount of visits. What are your thoughts about including it as a link in the header instead?

3. What are best practices with using (or not using) no follow with site navigation and footer links? How about with links to social media pages like Facebook/Twitter?

Any other thoughts/ideas about the site navigation for this site (www.aplossoftware.com) would be much appreciated. Thanks!

[customerparadigm.com]

Jason -

I took a look at the Aplos Software site, and I tend to agree with you.

what I like about the site is it's simplicity, which is good for an organization promising to "Simplify Your Nonprofit's Finances"

The color scheme is basic, there's a big strong call to action (Get Started for Free).

That said, there's very few options for the end user to interact with the site.  And links at the footer are not going to make that happen.

To answer your three questions:

1. What are your thoughts about including a drop down menu in the header for the different products?
My answer: I think this would be really helpful.  If the end user is on a long, long page, a footer navigation is helpful to allow someone to quickly click to something else on the site.  But it's not how most main stream users navigate a site.  The top navigation is...

2. They have a good blog with content that gets regularly updated. Currently it's linked in the footer and gets a tiny amount of visits. What are your thoughts about including it as a link in the header instead?

My answer: Yes!  You should add the blog to the top of the site.  The blog is a way that end users can see a little bit under the covers of an organization, as it's not the content that's been through so many rounds of revisions that it's 100% polished.  The blog is a great place to feature new clients, awards, and other information.  If it's updated frequently, it also demonstrates that the company is active, and conveys the idea that the software product the company is selling is not static / done, but is continuously supported.  That may or may not be true, but a blog that is updated all the time will tend to convey that the company is still actively working on the product.

3. What are best practices with using (or not using) no follow with site navigation and footer links? How about with links to social media pages like Facebook/Twitter?

My answer: honestly, I wouldn't worry too much about using no-follow tags on your footer navigation.  At least on this site.  You don't have so many links that Google is going to ignore them.  Plus, it's at the end of the page anyway.  You certainly could, though, and it won't hurt in any way.  Just make sure that your site map, privacy policy, etc are followed links.

Hope this helps!

• Jeff

[AlanBleiweiss]

Glad to hear you are helping them - they need it from the quick look I just did...

It would be helpful to add those three to the main navigation in a drop-down (as long as it functions across devices).  These are the primary product offerings and it would help visitors know right away that they offer these specific solutions without having to first click through, then scroll through the poorly constructed pages the main nav currently links to.

The problem with that scenario is "are these the only products they want to be found for?" If not, that would confuse anyone coming to the site for other solutions.

A better solution would be when someone clicks on the main navigation links for "accounting" or "oversight", that should take the visitor to a page that specifies each of the different products or services they offer in that bucket.  They would benefit from having a "sub-navigation" bar in each section unique to that section that appears on every page in that section.

On the home page they can have a paragraph describing those most important offerings and linking directly to them.  And on each main landing page they can have a paragraph describing each product/service in that section and linking to that specific product/service as well.

The problem with footer nav is it's just that - footer material - meaning "not as strong" as main navigation or in-content navigation. Loading it up with links to "all the things" is not helpful, even with a nofollow attribute, becuase it still has those words on the page, which can dilute topical focus of the main topic on individual product / service page.

Footer links should be streamlined to only a few "standard / common" links most sites have in footers.

The blog is best served with a main nav link as well, for the reasons you described.

Nofollow should really only be used when linking to a page you don't want indexed, or in rare situations, it can be used (with moderation) for other reasons It is NOT a panacea.