There are various places where the Website navigation links can be placed. Here we will look at the most common positions and their relative merits. In particular how they impact search engines.

Position on Page

There are three standard positions for placing the navigation links they are illustrated below:

The positions are top, left side and bottom.

Most websites use a combination the two most common are: top + left and left +bottom:

My preference is for left and bottom navigation. You should also be aware that the navigation menus will not be identical and this is discussed in website navigation structure. Whichever on you choose is a matter of preference but top and left navigation can have some impact on search engines and so it is important to consider that and ways to alleviate those problems:

Search Engines and Navigation

Search engines don't see the web page as humans do. To see how search engines will view your web page  use any of the free tools on the free tools page.

What you normally want is that the first thing a search engine sees is the page content -not the page navigation. The page content will normally start with an headline (see below).

Because the Website logo is an image it is not indexed by the search engines hence if implemented then the top site navigation links will be seen first by the search engines. Because they rank content at the top of the page higher than content elsewhere on the page you may find it has a negative effect on you page ranking with the search engines.

To overcome this problem with top level links you can use image or JavaScript links instead as the search engine effectively ignores them. However before you do, you need to understand the full effects of these linking types.

Now depending on how you have structured your web page ( most sites currently use tables) then the search engines will see the left navigational links next and again this may have negative effect on you page ranking with the search engines.

There is a very easy way however of laying out your tables so that the left navigation appears after the main site content.

The model I use for this site is left+ bottom and I use the extra blank cell to move the left navigation under the content as far as the search engines.

 The figures below show two common table layouts:

 The first layout uses two tables the first table for the logo and the second table is split into two columns the left column holds the site navigation and the right column holds the main page content.

The second layout uses a single table the first table split into two rows (3 cells) -a top row for for the logo and the second row is split into two columns the left column holds the site navigation and the right column holds the main page content.

In either case the search engine will read them in the order 1-2-3.(shown in figure)

This means that the logo is read first (not a problem as it is an image) followed by the navigation (problem) and finally the main content. However the order we really want for the search engines is: logo-content-navigation.

To accomplish this we need to add a blank cell in the left column as shown below:

The search engine now reads the page in the order 1-2-3-4 (shown in red) or logo-blank cell-content-navigation. Because the cell we inserted is blank it has no effect on the search engine other than to move it onto the content cell (what we want). As far as the viewer is concerned he doesn't see it either.

Related Articles and Resources:

• Site Navigation menu bars structures and Naming
• Site Navigation Link Types- Plain text, graphical etc.