Internal Linking: Thinking Inside The Box - Ordering off the menu
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Every page of the website should contain an easily located and simple to use page menu. Without a menu, of course, no visitor could ever find their way around the website. A well designed menu should also be helpful to the search engine spiders as they crawl around the site.
Like the related site map, the more pathways available to the spiders, the more deeply and completely a site will be crawled and indexed. Having more pages indexed, on a regular basis, assists in search engine rankings as well.
When designing menu buttons for a site, the best ones use simple HTML coding to reach the other site pages. Often, a site designer will use flash buttons to create a more exciting look to the site. While perhaps appealing to the eye, the flash button menu might not be the choice of the search engine spiders.
While it’s believed that the various spiders can and will crawl flash links, they will find it more difficult. It’s far easier to provide HTML links, even as a backup system. Making life easier for the spiders pays off in the search engine results pages (SERPs). As with all links, make certain that descriptive keyword anchor text is part of all page-connecting links, to reinforce theme relevance.
Next: Using footer links to get an extra kick >>
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