Website navigation directly affects two of the most important aspects of search engine optimization: user experience and search engine crawlability.
With good site navigation:
- It’s easy for site visitors to find what they’re looking for.
- Search engines can easily understand your site’s logical organization.
Even if you do everything right, but you skip website navigation, you’re in big trouble.
What is website navigation, exactly?
Website navigation is the set of elements, tools, and features that allow users to move through your site and find the information they need. All the links, menus, and search bars you see on a website make up its navigation system.
Several components make up website navigation:
Your top menu is your universal navigation. It’s what viewers see at the top of every page.
Mega menus are large, multi-column menus that display a wide range of options.
Breadcrumbs are small, horizontal links at the top of each page that show your location on the site’s hierarchy.
Your footer menu has all the links at the bottom of each page. It typically includes contact information, legal notices, etc.
The search bar allows users to search for specific content on your site.
A hamburger menu is a small, three-line symbol that expands to reveal website navigation options on mobile devices.
Sidebars are columns beside a web page’s primary content area, designed to show supplementary or related content.
Tabs and dropdown menus allow for more efficient grouping of pages and content.
Internal linking puts links within your website that connect related pages and content.
Call-to-action buttons prompt users to take specific actions, such as signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase.
Let’s dive into why they matter and how to use them effectively for SEO.
Why website navigation matters for SEO
Broadly speaking, the two reasons website navigation is critical for SEO are user experience and readability for search engines. Every sub-argument flows from one of these two concepts.
User experience
Have you ever clicked onto a blog or online store and the web page was just atrocious? Pop-ups everywhere, ads blocking the content, and links all over the page that seem to lead nowhere?
Yet the content you actually need is impossible to find. Website menus don’t work, or the content is hidden behind a wall of tabs, and you simply cannot get to it.
So you leave.
User-friendly website navigation makes it easy to use your site. That guarantees site visitors won’t click away from your content (or, at the very least, not immediately). Since bounce rate and time on site are two ranking factors search engines use to evaluate your content’s quality, this has a direct positive impact on search engine rankings.
Navigation also guides conversions. When it’s easier to find the products and content they’re looking for, your site visitors will be able to read your content, choose products, make purchases, sign up for newsletters, or take any other action. Great UX facilitates these behaviors without the user even thinking about it. And navigation is a critical factor in that.
Search engine readability
When search engines understand your site structure, it’s easier for them to crawl and index your website. If you don’t have an organized navigation system, search engines may not find all your pages or understand the relationship between them.
Consider how SEO indexing works:
- Every few days to a few weeks, Google reads your site.
- It scans the site to understand what it’s about and how it should be indexed into its search engine.
- It crawls each page you’ve added, following all the links it finds.
- It indexes each page according to its content and relevance to user search queries.
Without organized navigation, Google will miss some of your pages during the crawl process or fail to properly interpret their context. This means they won’t be indexed or displayed in search results, which drastically reduces your site’s visibility and traffic.
For example, if you have a blog with several different categories, but your navigation only lists the most recent posts, search engines won’t know how to categorize and rank your content.
With SEO-friendly navigation, this isn’t a problem.
Navigation factors that affect SEO performance
Clarity
People use general terms to describe what they’re looking for. Rule #1 of site navigation is to keep it simple. If your site navigation includes too much industry jargon or confusing terminology, nobody will find your content.
- Don’t use obscure names to describe your main pages (e.g., calling your blog page “thoughts” or “insights” ). Use words like blog, shop, contact, and resources.
- Don’t call case studies anything other than “case studies” or “customer stories.”
- Don’t use a proprietary name for your product or platform. If you have to use a branded term, add the standard one after — e.g., “MyBrand CRM.”
Here’s an example of a site with excellent naming conventions in its navigation:
You also want to use keywords wherever you can — page buttons, internal links, etc. — because that’s how search engine crawlers connect the dots. Do so according to page relevancy.
In the example above, DealHub’s /platform/product-element/ portion includes its main software components, like CPQ and subscription management. It also includes pages for things like sales proposals and Salesforce CRM integration.
When anyone searches for those terms and includes “DealHub” as part of their search query, this navigation structure makes it obvious to Google which pages to show.
Consistency
Your menu should never change when users go from page to page. It sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how often we see this at Linkflow.
A few tips for your global menu navigation:
- Menu items shouldn’t open new tabs. Keep users on the same tab.
- Use the same order for parent items. For example, if you have four main menu items for your home page, blog, pricing, and contact page, make sure they’re in that left-to-right order on subsequent pages. This helps users quickly find what they’re looking for.
- Include the same sub-menu items on every page, unless your product suite is extensive and complex, and clicking one of those items takes the user to a completely different page (or sub-section) in your site.
- Ideally, every dropdown menu should be the same size. Avoid making some dropdowns the entire width of the page while others aren’t.
Also, the menu should look aesthetically consistent. Avoid constant changes in color, fonts, or other design elements between pages.
Depth
Product complexity and site size will affect the number of pages you need to navigate through. Jobs sites, for example, will have tons of sub-categories to cover job types in multiple industries.
The one rule that stands, no matter what: Important pages should take very few clicks to get to.
I’m talking 1-2, max.
Google sees the homepage as the most important (it’s usually the page with the highest domain authority). It looks at “page depth” in reference to that page. The deeper the page, the more hops it takes to get there, and the less important Google considers it.
Let’s take the Ahrefs site as an example. They keep their navigation simple — the homepage links to each of the five core features, the pricing page, the enterprise section, and additional resources.
On the individual resources page, they’ve given an individual link to their “Beginner’s Guide to SEO” rather than including it in their “Academy” or “Blog” section.
In doing so, they’re signaling to Google that this guide is vitally important — more so than their other resources under those two sub-categories.
5 tips for excellent navigation SEO
Without further ado, here are our best practices for knocking your website navigation out of the park:
1. Prioritize mobile devices.
While it varies by industry (and B2B vs. B2C), 60.67% of all website traffic comes from mobile devices as of 2024.
Google has explicitly stated that they prioritize the mobile version of your website for indexing and ranking, and have been for years.
So you should, too.
In addition to responsive design (where your website adjusts itself based on the user’s device), there are a few considerations for mobile navigation:
- Website navigation menus and submenus should be easy to access and navigate with one hand.
- Avoid drop-down menus that open on hover, since you can’t “hover” on a touch screen. Consider making all submenu items visible at once or by giving them a tap.
- Avoid tiny link sizes. Buttons are your friends.
- Use design cues to signal where users can tap and touch — e.g., make the menu button look like a button by giving it depth, shadows, or a bright color.
Really, the experience for mobile users should be as app-like as possible. Here’s a solid example of a mobile website menu and homepage navigation:
2. Embrace simplicity.
There’s nothing worse than clunky, complicated navigation that makes users feel like they’re lost in a maze. Keep it simple and straightforward.
Don’t do too many things in your main navigation. Ideally, it should have clickability, and you should have a clear direction for every action.
The only exception is if you have a complex product or service with multiple categories and sub-categories. In that case, add an additional nested menu for pages that need more organization.
That said, avoid nested dropdowns that expand longer than one level. It’s overwhelming.
Also, don’t overdo it with CTAs — one in the upper-right corner and one at the end of an article or left of a hero image is plenty.
Also, don’t overdo it with CTAs — one in the upper-right corner and one at the end of an article or left of a hero image is plenty.
Beyond this, there needs to be enough white space, and your font needs to be readable. You also need breadcrumbs to make it easy for users to go back one or more web pages.
3. Use a sticky menu.
A sticky menu is one that stays at the top of the screen even when you start scrolling down. This makes it easier for users to access your menu from anywhere on the page.
This also means that your logo (and possibly a search bar) should be prominent and clickable from any point in your site — not just the homepage.
Even when I scroll down on this article about sticky menus, all the clickable navigation menu options are still there.
4. Structure your URLs logically.
Your URL structure plays a role in both user and search engine navigation. Keep it simple, logical, and consistent.
As an example, let’s say you’re running a retail website with multiple categories under “Women’s Clothing.” Your URL structure for the various subcategories could look like this:
- yoursite.com
- yoursite.com/blog
- yoursite.com/blog/blog-post-title
- yoursite.com/product
- yoursite.com/product/product-type
- yoursite.com/book-a-call
Your navigation goes hand-in-hand with this structure.
5. Test, test, test.
Don’t just create your navigation and leave it be. Even if you follow all the principles in this article, your intuition doesn’t always match up to what users actually prefer and find easy to navigate.
A/B test and get user feedback on everything:
- Colors
- Buttons and icons
- Emphasis on your most important navigation items
- Drop-down menus vs. visible sub-items on the main menu
- Search functions
Also set up Google Analytics to track how your site’s performing and what users are engaging with the most.
Google Search Console can also give you insights into which pages are ranking well and how your search result snippets look to users.
Do it right the first time…
…because otherwise, you’ll have a huge pile of cleanup work in the future. With every page you add to the site, it’s only going to get harder and harder.
Especially if you’re launching a new website, doing a rebrand, or migrating, the best time to get SEO involved is in the planning stage.
We can help you set this up right the first time, so Google (and, by extension, users) can easily read and understand your website. Book a call with our SEO experts and see how.
