Why Website Navigational Menus Matter in SEO

The online world of business is getting more competitive all the time. Especially since the coronavirus pandemic, many businesses that used to operate only in the real world have started to fight for their own online presence as well. In fact, the industry for digital advertising agencies in Australia alone is worth more than $2 billion every single year!

On top of that, there are more than 3,900 such companies competing in Australia. There is clearly an incredible amount of demand for search engine optimisation. There is a long list of reasons that business owners and managers take seriously anything that affects search engine optimisation, like website navigational menus.

So how exactly do website navigational menus affect search engine optimisation? Read on to learn all about the most important things to understand about how your website navigational menus can affect your ranking on search engines!

Website Navigational Menus Attract More Customers

Many people have only a passing understanding of search engine optimisation. They think that search engine algorithms mostly pay attention to what words you put in your website content and titles.

The truth is that search engine optimisation (SEO) algorithms are getting more sophisticated all the time. They are starting to track extremely subtle things.

At the same time, one of the simplest things for search engine algorithms to pay attention to is how popular a website is.

In fact, search engines rank this kind of thing more highly than almost anything else. When you think about it, this makes sense.

After all, a lot of other rules about SEO might say that a website should not rank very high. But if tons of people are using it anyway, then those other rules must be missing out on something important.

As a result, website popularity has a disproportionate impact on search engine ranking. If you want to end up at the top of search engine results pages, then you will want to make sure that as many people are using your website as possible.

In turn, that means that anything that makes your website more appealing and intuitive for visitors can lead to improvements in your search engine ranking. That is why quality navigational menus are so important.

The right navigational menu makes it easy for people to find what they’re interested in on your website. Without them, people might not appreciate the quality of the content on your website because they cannot easily find it.

Ignoring Website Navigational Menu Tips Can Lead to Bouncing Visitors

On the other hand, what if your navigational menu is extremely awkward or unpleasant to use? In that case, people are more likely to give up and look for another website to show them what they are looking for.

Unfortunately, this has two separate costs. The obvious cost is that you have lost a potential customer.

However, there is also a second cost. Search engine algorithms pay attention to something called bouncing visitors. Bouncing refers to when people go to a webpage but then quickly leave it.

When this happens, the search engine concludes that there is something offensive or otherwise unpleasant about the webpage. That means that it quickly knocks it down in search engine rankings.

After all, if people are quick to leave a website, then the search engine does not want to disappoint customers by sending them to websites that they will not enjoy staying on for very long.

The wrong navigational menu can mean that people don’t like using your website. That can lead to them bouncing off your website. That, in turn, can lead to worse search engine rankings.

Intuitive Website Navigation Leads to Greater Engagement

Suppose that somebody navigates an unwieldy navigation menu and finds a great piece of content. Maybe they read it for a while, but they decide that they are looking for other great pieces of content about related subjects.

But if they struggled with the navigation menu before, they might feel like it is too unwieldy to try to move to different pages of the website to find other pieces of content. They might decide to just stick with their current piece of content even if it is not exactly what they are looking for.

Unfortunately, this can still negatively affect your search engine optimisation. That is because people are engaging with your website less. The websites that rank highest on search engines are those that people navigate and interact with in as many ways as possible.

Ignoring a Website Navigational Menu Guide Can Decrease Loading Speed

Navigational menus should be a combination of intuitive and simple. If they are too complicated, they can be annoying to use. Additionally, excessively complicated navigational menus can use too much processing power.

But why is that a problem? Webpages that use too much processing power can take longer to load and use. Search engines understand that people don’t like websites that are slow and unwieldy.

As a result, search engines pay careful attention to how quickly pages load on a website. The wrong navigational menu design can mean that your page loads very slowly. That will lead to a lower ranking on search engines.

Understand the Importance of Website Navigational Menus

We hope that some of the ideas in this brief article about the importance of website navigational menus have been helpful for you. Many people pay most of their attention to the content on their website. However, search engine optimisation is a complicated procedure that needs to take into account other things.

Figuring out the right way to set up your navigational menus can increase how high you rank on Google search engine results. That makes it an investment that will pay off permanently once you make it. To learn more about how you can take your SEO and other marketing endeavours to the next level, feel free to reach out and get in touch with us here at any time!