Creating and maintaining a user-friendly website is one of the key factors in determining search ranking. Google and the other search engines reward sites that are easy to use. Well thought out and executed site navigation has a significant impact on the usability of your website.

Visitors come to your website looking for information or content. So making it easy to find what they are looking for is critical to keeping them on your website (avoiding bounces) and converting a visitor into a buyer. This is accomplished via website navigation.

It is important to strike a balance between showing the breadth of information on your website and keeping it simple enough to understand. Limit the number of menu items by categorizing the content under major headings and make sure to highlight the Contact Us and About Us pages. Keep your site organization as intuitive as possible. Your site should “make sense” to your visitors. If they have to think or guess how to navigate the site, they will quickly move on.

Consistency is also important. Place your navigation bar in the same place on every page. Most websites place navigation across the top or down the left-hand side of the page keeping it visible no matter what device you are on. If you navigation bar drops below the scroll line on a mobile device, it makes your site less user-friendly. You should never have to scroll to find the navigation bar.

It is easy to get lost on a today’s content rich websites. Make sure you help your visitors know where they are with linked headings often located at the top of the page or other types of bread crumbs. It is also a good idea to help your visitors know where to go next. This is a big part of conversion optimization. A call to action with a link can help take them to the next step, such as downloading something or placing an order.

A critical and often overlooked step is to test your website. Make sure that every link in your navigation works. Nothing puts people off faster than navigation links that don’t work.

Talk to your SEO before you design and new site navigation or change the one you have. A seemingly small change can have a significant impact on how your site is received by your potential customers and the search engines.