OPTIMIZE

Links and Navigation:
Optimization Challenges With Image Maps or Navigation Buttons

Sometimes designers want to use graphics for navigational links. There are basically two ways of making such graphical links that are very different. One of them most search engine spiders will follow and the other one most will not.

• Image maps
• Navigation buttons

With image maps you can have different areas of one image linking to different web pages. That is a very common way to build top- or side-navigation bars or country maps to click on.

Most search engines do not read image maps, so you should always add additional text based links on each page for search engine spiders to follow. The text-based links will also be good for visitors who do not use a graphic capable browser, are surfing with graphics turned off to save bandwidth, or who simply do not understand that you want them to click on the image.

Navigation buttons are single images that each link to a specific web page. Most search engines spiders will follow this type of link. However, if you want to be absolutely sure that all search engines can and will follow all your links, we still recommend adding pure text-based links in addition to any kind of graphical links.

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