What is the best approach for SEO optimization of website navigation links?

100 link is only a suggestion. The best approach for optimizing your navigation links if you have several hundred is to divide them up into a hierarchy. Google does not like a flat site architecture where every page links to every other page. Try having a nav bar along the top with links to your absolutely most important pages. Then in your footer, repeat those links with a few sub-link below each one that is maybe an important sub-page of each important page. Then have a dynamic sidebar that changes depending on the page you are on. That way the important pages are always linked to, and the other pages are linked to each other by how related they are. For e-commerce, this means if you sell apparel, your main links would be tops, pants, shoes, hats, and accessories. Under each of those at the bottom you could do mens, womens and kids. Then if someone is on the kids shoes page, your sidebar could show other kids apparel links, like links to kids jeans, t-shirts or baseball caps. Then you want one XML sitemap with a link to them all. Hope that helps!

Imagine yourself in a town you’ve never been before. You have no map andyou’ve got hopelessly lost in one way streets area. The longer you drive around the more frustrated you get. You want desperately out. When you finally escape you wish never to return and warn your friends about this area. Think if the situation happens with your website!? It’s not completely excluded situation. A bad website structure causes the same reaction. Illogical structure confuses visitors and makes them anxious. The red X in the right upper corner is a lot easier way out. What are the main mistakes? Illogical structure – The biggest mistake in website navigation is illogical structure. If the structure is messy your website reminds more of a labyrinth where there is no way out. Breaking the habits – People feel comfort about some certain elements about a website structure. Where do you search for contact information? Right upper corner? Probably you’re not the only one and your clients have the same habits. Being different is good, but not at the expense of the unwritten rules. Too much/less landing pages – Sometimes the navigation has brought to minimum compressing a lot of information on one page. It makes the landing page very long and visitors have to scroll down. Too long page is not good as people don’t know whether the information hidden is worth their effort. The opposite situation is landing pages with only 1-2 sentences per page that would perfectly fit together on one page. Missing CTA’s – Information is there, but then what? You should give specific directions for further actions if you want your website to serve some purpose. Missing internal linking (anchor links) - Everything seems just correct but there is trouble navigating between pages. The aim of anchor links is to make internal navigation easier and make the content active. Check here for 8 easy steps how to fix this: http://www.wsionline.ee/how-to-improve-your-website-navigation Good Luck!

-use CSS to position the nav at the top of the page- is nice way. Google saying this 100 links thing. They are suggesting not to have more than 100 links per page. It is normal to have 100 or more links if you have e-commerce web site. But best way to show then in your site is putting them into nav bar. Google bots are smart, they can understand the page sections well, so maybe it is not good to put all links in the content but showing them in nav bar is ok. And also you can show some of the main categories at the footer part.