Along with other elements, your site navigation has to be dead-on because it has a huge impact on so many things. Poor navigation structure will tell Google and other engines a thing or two about your site, and they will score your site for SEO based on that information. Do not ever think that people will give you a break just because you were too lazy to get your site navigation where it needs to be. What we have for you today are three excellent suggestions you can take and assess your site's navigation for possible problems.
The use of Flash on websites has greatly decreased these days since Flash isn't really that user friendly and tends to be unreadable by the search engines. If you are just in total love with Flash, then at least give people an option to sidestep it. This relates to navigation from the standpoint of clicking on a link and waiting forever for the Flash to load. The smart businesses will make their sites accessible to all visitors, and that is what this is all about. We do not feel it is worth the risk in terms of the numbers of visitors who may potentially be turned-off by the lack of an alternative.
Should you have pages that are long due to content, then go ahead and place more links at the base of each page so people can quickly click on something else. It is a very simple matter to do, and there is no real reason for not doing it in our minds. We believe this is something you must do on all of your longer pages otherwise you will be forcing people to scroll all the way up.
Any time you are choosing the names for your categories and menus, you need to think in terms of optimization for search. One thing you should never do is try to get creative with names that are really not understood. When it comes to general names like your Home page, it is probably best to go with that name across the board on your sites. The net has been here for over a decade, and the habits of people are established so keep that fact in mind.
Your navigation is one of the backbones of your site, and it should never be neglected in any way. Just remember to plan before building, and then make sure what you do is based on proven principles. You know how you react when you are on sites that have poor navigation, and you most likely do not stay there very long either. If your site has been struggling, then stop and check out your navigation and make sure it is up to par.