Recommended Navigation
Let me make the recommendations first, and then I’ll show you how to
implement them.
To start off (you can add or change this later), I suggest that you have the
following four navigation features:
1. One menu: Either above or below the site logo, or in the footer,
where there are links to your 'legal pages'. That’s the Contact, Privacy,
Disclaimers, About Us, and so forth. These links should be
'nofollowed', and the actual legal pages should be set to 'noindex',
'Follow' and 'No Archive'.
2. A search box: If your theme supports a search box in the header
area, you might want it there. However, I personally prefer a search
box at the top of the sidebar (right or left, whichever I use).
3. A main navigation menu: Either in or below the logo or in the
sidebar (right or left), that links to the main sections of your website
(the main categories).
4. Sidebar dynamic menus: Each category (or main section), of your
site should have a different navigation menu in the sidebar. Google
likes dynamic menus which change depending where on a site a visitor
is. For example, if you are in the mountain bike section of a site, the
main navigation menu should be related to mountain bikes. If you are
in the road bike section, the main navigation menu relates to road
bikes.
Personally, the type of sites I build also benefit from a 'related posts'
section, either after the main content of a post, or in the sidebar (done
using the 'Yet Another Related Posts' plugin). However, it depends on
the type of site you build, so this may not suite your particular project.
I also implement internal linking between the posts on the site using
context-sensitive links (this is done using the 'C.I. Backlinks' plugin).
The internal linking of posts on a site is something that most of the big
players do (see Wikipedia for example), and it really does help your
pages get indexed and rank better.
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