Use text links!
If you can not do without graphical buttons, you must not under any circumstances forget the alternative text (alt attribute)! If your website is not navigable for disconnected graphs.
Do not use Javascript, Java, Flash or image maps for navigation.
Realize hover effects using CSS instead of Javascript + graphics. Use speaking link text ("anchor text"), ie concrete descriptions or keywords related to the content of external sites.
Bad: a good SEO tutorial can be found here
Good: We recommend this SEO Tutorial
Links should be clearly recognizable as such, so that they will not see or accidentally activated. The convention is that link text is a different color and underlined. Not underlined links should at least be underlined when hovering the mouse (hover effect).
When navigation links: If your navigation is very long (eg, 20 or more pages) and / or composed by graphic elements from a lot of source code, which has the consequence that the actual page content only relatively far back in the source code shows up and therefore less of search engines can be considered.
In this case it may be useful, with the so-called "table trick" to navigate the source code behind the page content to be laid. (For more information just google.)
The link on the home page should show the "empty" domain and not to the index page!
Correct: <a href="/"> or <a href="./">
Wrong: <a href="index.html">
Link - as shown opposite - important keywords in addition in the text, if it is to their own pages. This type of linking is also known as inline links.
If the word appears more than once on a page, but they should link only 1-2 times, as otherwise may degrade the readability of the text.
Check the functionality of all links with a link checker.
For very large, deeply nested websites, it may be useful to create a sitemap in order to accelerate the complete recording of the entire website in the search engine index. The sitemap is a HTML page that contains links to all sub-sites. It should be linked to the main, because in this way for the search engine robot are all the bases with only two links available. Additionally, the Site Map are also linked to each base, especially if it is presented in a way that it provides guidance for visitors.
Remember that visitors do not always enter your site from the home page. Also, each base is a potential entry page.
Therefore, make sure that you get along on every page immediately. In addition to conventional navigation, there are ways to improve the orientation:
A so-called breadcrumb navigation, the user can immediately see at what level in the hierarchy, he is, and can also achieve higher levels all with one click.
In the footer section of the website may contain links to the major themes or categories are appropriate.
