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Web surfers are basically an impatient bunch and if a website is hard to figure out because the links are not obvious, they will click away never to return. Site navigation plays an extremely important role in determining the effectiveness of a website. The following articles is about the core principles of designing website navigations.

It is crucial that the site navigation is easy and makes sense to an average person. Being creative is a good thing, but you can notice that well-designed websites have pretty much the same navigation layouts.

You must never forget the purpose of the site and its potential audience when designing navigational elements. Majority of websites exist to either inform the visitor about a product or service or to sell it. Therefore there are some basic guidelines to follow:

Make sure all navigational elements are clearly links by using standard conventions for links such as buttons, menus, underlining the text or changing color on mouse. Another important thing is that you do not use too clever or unclear names for links.

If you are using non-standard links tell the visitor that it is a link. For instance, suppose you are creating a site where there is a map with a few cities marked on it and you would like to let the visitor click on the city name to find out more about this city. Make sure you inform the user to click on the city name to get more information regarding that city.

It is crucial that you remember about the “Three Click Rule” used by the majority of web developers. Most internet users won’t click more than three links to get to the information they are looking for. Therefore, make sure that the visitor will be able to access every page on your site within three clicks.

Splash elements such as flash movies should be avoided. Make sure that your site design is simple but also attractive. But if you want to use on you should remember to also use META REFRESH tag to take the visitor automatically to your home page after a few seconds and also you must not forget to provide a clickable and clearly marked link or a button so the visitor can skip the entry page, otherwise lots of people will leave your site. Remember that internet users mostly look for information and not entertainment.

Navigation Element Locations

Top Menus – a top of the page menu bar is usually located directly below the page header graphic that contains the site logo. The items in these menus vary from single links to drop down and expanding menus. It is up to you whether each menu item is a graphic or just text. Whichever option you chose you need to hyperlink the elements so that the visitor can click on them and be taken to the information described.

Left Side Navigation – it is usually a column or text area on the left top area of the page. Similar to the top menu, items can be single links or expanding menu.

Right Side Navigation – it is usually not used, but if used it is implemented on the top right section of the site as a column or text area. This place is usually used for ads and not for site navigation.

Bottom Menus – – they can be either a menu bar or footer depending what the designer prefers. Menu bars can be graphics or text links but footer are generally only text links.

Important Navigation Elements

Internal Page Links – Every page on the website should be within two or three clicks from the home page. Make sure that the visitor can reach all the important pages with just ONE. Which links are prominently displayed will be determined by the type of website.

Login Boxes – they should be clearly displayed on the website. Common locations are top left, top right or inside the page header.

Shopping Carts – if you use them to sell products or services remember to display a view cart button on each and every page in a prominent way. The most commonly used location is the top right side just below or as part of the header.

Order Buttons – you need to make them easily visible and large. Less clicks needed to get to your sales page results in better sales.

Breadcrumbs – they are links and a graphical representation of your current location in the site. Their most common location is the top left below the header. Each word is a link back to the previous page. They are in the form

Home-> Articles-> Marketing

External Links – external links can be used anywhere but are most frequently used inside the text areas on a website. They can be used to refer to other sites with additional information, to recommended products or to simply anything you wish.

Advertisements – they are most often hyperlinked banners of text. Ads can be put everywhere on your site, and most people place them under the header, at the bottom of the page and some eve within the text areas of the site. Most developers believe that ads “above the fold” are more effective.

(“Above the fold” refers to the area of a webpage that is visible without having to scroll.)

Downloadable Items – if you offer downloadable items such as audio, video or pdf files, make sure that you tell the user haw big the file is and whether they need an application to use the file. If they do an application, provide a link to the application. If your site offer pdf files for example, link to the free Acrobat reader.

Site Map – site mps are great for displaying the whole site to the visitors. (Search engine spiders also seem to like it).It is just a list of all the pages of your website with clickable links to these pages.

Summary

A good navigation system can increase the numbers of pages viewed by each visitor. More page visited will result in more sales, signups and will surely make your site more successful.

Backlinks For Increasing Your Page Rank

Creating a great website is only part of having an Internet presence.  If no-one can find your site when searching then you might as well not spend any time making your website.

One of the most important things that you can do to have an effective web presence is have other web sites link to it.  There are two different types of links, reciprocal links and one way links.  Both are easy and effective ways to build traffic but one is much more powerful than the other – one-way links.

Reciprocal backlinks are when you link to a site and that web site also links back to your website.  This was a common type of linking a couple years ago and is still commonly used.  Some site owners get great traffic by participating in a link exchange service or system built just for reciprocal backlinks.  A link exchange is a group of people that exchange links with one another.

One-way links are just a link to your website from another website without the exchange.  In some cases you may agree to exchange links to different sites which is called an n-way link exchange.  This type of linking is considered by most experts to be more successful than reciprocal links..  But, it can be very difficult to get a one-way link.  There are three main strategies for getting one-way links: submit your website to directories, give away something significant that includes your link, pay for a link on another high ranking web site.

1. Creating backlinks by submitting your web site to directories is normally free unless you choose to upgrade.  Directories are special websites that list other sites that viewers might be interested in and are normally hand edited so they have additional authoritative weight in the search engine formulas.  There are software packages that can help with the dull process of filling out directory web forms.  One of the least expensive is Directory Site Submitter.

Directory Site Submitter will let you set up and manage multiple projects with multiple websites per project and then help you submit to over 400 free directories.  The links from these web sites will be valuable for SEO reasons more than actual traffic.

2. Another solution is to give away something valuable that includes your link.  Articles are very common since so many website owners need web content.  They are inexpensive to create and can be effective at drawing one-way links to your web site.

3. Avoid buying links on sites for SEO purposes.  It can cost up to $100 a month or more to put your link on a high pagerank site and it still may not be counted in the search engine algorithm.  Google has repeatedly said that buying direct links will not be of value for SEO.  But, you might still use this technique to drive visitors from a high traffic site to your site.

The real truth is that if you are trying to build  long term income, it is going to take a while before your website becomes profitable.  A long term strategy for a website may take six months or even a year for it to start generating income.  It is also essential to start building back links immediately.  Choose your links carefully.  Make sure that you are not getting links from low level sites, scraper web sites or inbound links from bad neighborhoods.

Remember, in today’s competitive Internet environment, if you would like a successful site then you have to do at least as much or more SEO than the websites on the first page of search engine results.