Site Navigation Link Types

Linking type- Plain text, graphical etc.

There are many different ways of providing website navigational links.

• Plain text links
• JavaScript links
• PHP links
• Graphical links

Plain text links

Plain text links are by far the easiest to implement and are to be recommended for most websites. All Pages should include some plain text links even if they use other link types as their main navigation structure.

 Plain text links are used because they are search engine friendly- means that all search engines are able to follow them.  The problem with plain text links is that they can be very difficult to maintain for large websites (>50 pages). However, careful attention to website design can overcome this.

The strategy I try to adopt is that a navigation change should affect at most 20 pages and were possible only 10 pages. This means that in a 100 page website the pages will not all have the same navigational structure.

As an example this webpage is part of the website design section of this website and so the main navigation links are all website design related and not the same links as you will find on the home page. This is considered in more detail in website navigation menu bar structure.

JavaScript Navigation

JavaScript navigation can be used to build very complex drop down menus suitable for large websites. It requires far more knowledge and expertise to implement but it has the advantage that once implemented then it is easily changed.

In order to change the navigational structure for 100s of web pages a single page change is all that is required.

The main disadvantage ( and it is a big one) is that JavaScript links aren't followed by search engines and hence the pages referenced by these links may not be indexed unless some other form of navigation is provided- usually via a sitemap.

Even a sitemap may not be sufficient for search engines like Google as the Page search rank is derived from the sitemap page and not the home page.

This aside, I would caution about using JavaScript navigation unless you really need it. If you do always supplement it with plain text navigation for your important pages.

PHP Navigation

Coming soon