Search Engine Journal

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/technical-seo/website-navigation/#close

Users come first: Your website navigation should satisfy users first. Then, optimize your navigation for SEO performance. Never compromise the user experience.

Orbit Media

https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/website-navigation/

Be descriptive

“What we do” doesn’t actually say what you do. Neither does “Products,” “Services” or “Solutions.” Descriptive navigation that uses keyphrases is better for two reasons. Here’s where SEO and conversions come in.

Descriptive labels in your navigation are good for search engines and visitors
 

Avoid format-based navigation

Navigation labels such as “videos,” “photos” and “white papers” tell visitors the format of the content, but not the topic. People don’t go to websites looking for videos or whitepapers. They visit websites looking for answers and information.

Nielsen Norman Group recommends against using format-based navigation.

Avoid dropdown menus

Usability studies show that dropdown menus are annoying. Here’s why: visitors move their eyes much faster than they move their mouse. When they move their mouse to a menu item, they’ve likely already decided to click… and then you gave them more options. It’s a hiccup in the mind of the visitor.

Depending on how they’re programmed, they may lead to problems with search engines.

But the research shows that one type of drop down menu performs well in usability studies: The “mega drop down.” These offer lots of options, making that moment of friction worth it.

The order of your website navigation is important

• Primacy effect: Items at the beginning of a list are more easily remembered.
• Recency effect: Items at the end of a list (or things that just happened) are more easily remembered.

How to optimize your website’s navigation

Here are some examples of decisions you might make based on your analysis from these reports.

• Remove items that rarely get clicked, if they aren’t critical
• Rename or relabel that rarely get clicked, if they are important
• Move items that often get clicked to the beginning

Website navigation on mobile devices

Adding the word “menu” may help visitors find this type of “hidden” navigation. The Nielsen Norman Group warns that hidden navigation increases task completion time for visitors.

Quantum Dynamix

https://www.quantumdynamix.net/blog/improve-websites-navigation-9-best-practices/

ALWAYS MAKE IT CLEAR WHERE THE USER IS LOCATED.

There are bread crumbs at the top of the page’s content showing each of the following pages that led to this page. You can click on any of these breadcrumbs to go back to a previous page.

Search Engine Journal

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/technical-seo/website-navigation/#close

• Cross-linking between content silos: Content relevancy between pages is important for ranking, which comes naturally in a well-categorized, hierarchical site architecture. However, this can have limitations when it lacks cross-linking between content silos where some pages are just too deep or too far away from receiving a good amount of link juice from other sources.
• Blogs to products, products to blogs: Create high-quality content that is helpful and relevant to your target audience. If these blog posts help in a product buying decision, then link to the blog post from the specific product page(s).
• Tracking parameters: Avoid using them; use the onClick event handler on links for tracking purposes. It is always safe to have a self-referencing canonical tag.
• JavaScript links: Avoid using JavaScript to write content and links. If there is no way around it, there are methods to make it work.