Navigation is THE most important thing after content

There are literally hundreds of blogs that I would rate as 'excellent' in terms of content. But the vast majority do not deliver in terms of navigation.

The idea of a 'blog' or weblog started as a kind of online diary, a blog maybe had a theme but mostly was intermittent ramblings of an individual, in chronological order.

If the blog has great content, it can be difficult to find exactly what we need, or to 'discover' something cool, or just browse an area of interest without having to scroll back through pages and pages of historical posts.

How to create Great Navigation on a Blog - Start with Structure

To start with, navigation is not the same thing as structure. Structure refers to how the content is stored in a framework. A good example is a directory structure, for storing information on a hard drive. Most of us are familiar with this. Search-Marketing-Blog.com uses exactly that - a directory structure. On the server hard drive is a tree structure of folders, according to subject. Each blog entry is in fact a text file stored within that structure in the correct folder.

Tags are an Excuse for Muddled Thinking

Tags have become very popular as a way to mark a post, so that it can be found easily. They are helpful but certainly not the full story. Tags do not make up for an ordered structure combined with an effective search tool. With information ordered by topic/subject, tags are better deployed to help cross-subject theming and searching - for example the tag 'stats' show posts with statistical content regardless of the subject folder they are in.

• Search tool. Such a fundamental requirement for any website. How come so many blogs don't have them?

• List of recent entries. Seems essential that a visitor landing on your site (any page) can quickly see the most recent entries you have written.

• Related entries. When looking at a post, related entries should be listed. In a folder structure this is easy, just display the titles of the other posts in that folder and its sub-folders. When viewing search results, in addition to full entries displayed upfront, there should be a list of all titles found.

• Calendar. It should be easy to quickly display the posts of a certain month, and move back/forward from year to year.

• Breadcrumbs. These are the Home >> You >> Are >> here type of links so that a visitor can easily identify his location on your site. At any point in the information structure, it should be easy to see the sub-folders from that location so that browsing and discovery is easy.

• Sitemap. At any time, a complete list of all folders and topics is just a click away.

Wouldn't it be cool if a blog had ALL of these navigational devices?

Yep, sure would. You're reading it!

tag:geek