Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Hierarchy Link Navigation Explained


Linking properly in between site pages on your site helps the search engine bots better find, index and rate each and every page on your site. A good hierarchy linking structure not only ensures the SERPS find all your site pages, but also helps them understand the overall theme of your site as well.

A good practice is to link from your home page to all the major or top level categories on your site. It is now not advised to link to sub pages of your sites main categories. Instead you should link to those sub pages from the parent or main category page itself as they are related in category. In the structure of your links you should logically guide both the surfer and the SERPS from page to page in a hierarchical fashion. Your link structure should flow down from the top level main categories on down through your individual content and product pages. The best example of this can be seen in an out of the box BANS site with a main category number chosen in the setup and the navigation in the setup being set as closed. You can see how only top level links are shown and as you click one your next page will show only the sub category page links. This is now considered the best way to set the navigation links in any BANS store setup. This makes sense as it helps keep with the theme and gives clearer path to both SERP and surfer.

You should avoid the temptation to link from one internal page to another that is not directly related in nature. An example is you do not want a link on a page about "Dell laptops" linking to a page on "HP accessories". If you do this you will dilute your overall theme or niche. By linking from one page to another page you are in a ways telling the SERPS that the 2 pages are related. If they are not related, do not link them to each other. Gone are the days of being able to get to any page on on your site to any page on your site. While not OVERLY important, it is something that can indeed inch your internal pages ranking. If the surfer was to land on your home page, your links should be able to guide him to exactly where he wants to go through the main category listings. Just look at Google to see how they lead the surfer through hierarchical linking fashion.

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