How to create SEO friendly navigation menus?

Let’s talk today about good and bad menus first. Good menus are those that are SEO friendly, bad ones are those that are not. Simple logic.

When dealing with clients, one thing that’s common to all, is about the use of fancy javascript navigation menus, that troubles me most. If you use one, please refrain from using it. If you are a blogger, there is very little chance that you are using one. But the JS enabled menus are mostly found in portfolio like pages.

A few words about portfolio pages. They are a gold mine for onsite optimization, there would be many wrongs. They are all frills and no stuff. They are stupid. They make lot of noise.

Many a times, they have this animated JS enabled menus that are not crawlable by bots. Big mistake and out subject of talk today.

Crawlers by default, avoid anything that’s Javascript enabled and Ajax. This is one fallback of modern crawlers, even the google one. They haven’t deviced a technology that will help them crawl the contents of JS enabled elements on a webpage and AJAX. They had a problem with Flash, but it is almost rectified now.

• Javascript/AJAX powered navigation menus may look cool and attractive to the eyes, but avoid them whereever possible. Instead use CSS and you could create almost similar spectacular and eye-catching menus.
• Don’t use images for making menu images, instead try CSS, it’s cleaner, quick and easy to manage.
• If it’s completely necessary, keep the JS menus, but submit the linking pages to google.
• Avoid sound effects please, it’s so 90’s!
• Use text to link to pages in the navigation menus if possible.
• Place the navigation menus wither on the top, or the left hand table, or at a place where crawlers won’t miss it.
• Don’t embed them in frames – big mistake!

So the idea is that Navigation menus should be simnple, crawlable, easy to navigate and thus serving the purpose. Let them not be too fancy, complex and JS enabled. It defeats the purpose.

You can find excellent resources on making CSS Navigation menus here
CSS Tutorials on Navigation menus CSS Menu help High quality CSS Menus