My question was probably not specific enough - sorry.

Example:
Today our top menu could be: "Automobiles" (which is the keyword, that we want to target) But "Cars" is shorter and easier to use, and looks better. There we would like to change it.
Below this we have several pages with: Automobiles in

How much value does it have to have the exact keyword in the main menu of the site?

• the menu is on all pages on our site.

We have several other internal links with anchortext "Automobiles" linking to the page.

Hi

I would like to hear if someone could help me decide whether or not it is important regarding SEO that the menu name is the same as the keyword we want to rank for.

The site is a static site and one of our most important keywords.

To give an example. Our menu name is "cars" and we want to rank for "cheap rental cars".