Don’t Rely on Sidebars and Headers to Guide Your Visitors
Posted on November 13, 2007 by
Dee Barizo 
General, Web Development 
12 Comments
From SEO Book page 11:
If you want your site to convert, assume many site visitors will ignore the
global navigation. Actively guide people toward conversion from within the
active content area of your website.
I’m starting to realize the importance of using content-based links to guide my visitors to important pages in my site.
You’ve probably heard of the phrase ad blindness. This happens when internet users start ignoring your ads. They ignore the ads because they want to read the content instead of the ads.
I think there is a similar phenomenon with sidebar and header navigation. Sidebars and headers rarely change so oftentimes your visitors will ignore them. I know I often ignore sidebars and headers. If what I want is not in the content portion of a site, I usually close that Firefox tab and look for another site.
So, if you have an important page and want many people to see it, find a way to link to it within the content area of your pages.
For example, some home pages look like this (the links in the picture are pointing to internal pages):
Many people will ignore the header and sidebar links. If don’t find what they need in the two links in the content area, they will click the back button and look for another site.
But what if you home page looked like this?
By having more links in your content area, you give your visitors more options to explore your site. You show your broad knowledge in your niche because you’re pointing to many different pages. Your pageviews will increase. Your visitors will stay on your site longer. And you can guide your visitors to more of your best content or your best converting landing pages.
Obviously, you don’t want your home page content area to have too many content-based links. That looks disorganized and spammy. But don’t be afraid to add an extra link or an extra paragraph filled with 2-3 links.
What about blogs?
Since many of you are bloggers, here are some ways to apply this principle to blogs.
Within your posts, link to other related posts. For example, this post is related to blog design and usability and navigation.
Figure out your best posts through by looking at backlinks, traffic, and feedback in the comments. Find natural ways to link to these posts often.
I think category pages can be improved. I would aggregate your best posts for each category. Next, write a short description for those posts. Then, add those posts with their descriptions at the top of their category pages. When someone visits your category pages, the first thing they’ll see is your best posts for that category.
At the end of each month, highlight your favorite posts of that month with a montly wrap up post.
Write a series of posts that are thematically related and link them to each other. Darren’s blogging tips for beginners is great example. This method allows you to demonstrate expertise in a topic. You’ll build trust with your readers. At the end of the series, you can leverage that trust with an product offer.
Conclusion
Don’t rely on sidebar and header links to guide your visitors. Instead, use the content area. Add more links in the content area to guide your visitors to your best content.
Do you use the content area to guide your visitors?
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I just had a conversation about this very topic with one of the people who writes on my blog. I was asking him to do just this to promote the writing contest I am running, and now that my site is getting scraped, I heard it would mean more link juice courtesy of the jerks that are scraping my content.
His reply:
sorry, I messed up the formating.
He said this:
“I’ll definitely do it if that’s what you’re thinking, because it is your blog - but I also have to admit that I find it a bit tacky. I agree that it will boost the Page Rank a bit, but also think it will turn off readers at the same time. I’ve always been one to think that self-promotion needs to be done in a very tidy manner in order to be effective.
By linking to yourself, you’re essentially trying to take advantage of those scam sites that post links from wherever - however, while you are doing that, you’re also visibly putting links to yourself that real people will be seeing all the time.
I definitely think that a link to the blog contest or front page should be up there every week - but also believe that it would be overkill to do that in every post.”
Blogs are tricky because most people expect the front page of blogs to be constantly updating. With this in mind, I do think mentioning the contest on every post is overkill.
I would try to mention it every 2-3 posts. And don’t do more than one announcement post for your contest. The rest of posts with your contest link should have informative and useful content. Somehow you have to relate the content to the contest.
I’ll have a post today about promoting a product (or contest) through your blog without drastically changing your blog’s focus. Feel free to subscribe if you haven’t already :)
Also, I noticed you have a traditional home page while your blog sits on a subdomain. However, I didn’t see a mention of the contest on your home page. That’s the perfect place for it because traditional home pages are perceived to be static pages (meaning they don’t change much).
This is a great point. I haven’t been linking much to my older posts, but I think I should be. It gives your reader the perception that he is reading more ‘new’ material.
This works great for CTAs, especially on blogs. One blog has a script that identifies new visitors; at the end of the most recent post displays “looks like you’re new here - why don’t you sign up for our RSS feed?”
I always pay more attention to CTAs at the end of a post, or within a post. I love Steve Pavlina’s “Find this information helpful? ‘Donate To Steve’ so you can enjoy the spirit of giving, too.”
Yeah, I like how Steve Pavlina words his call to action :)
Also, what is the script called? Do you have a URL?
[…] I wrote about not relying on the header or sidebar to guide your visitors. Instead, use the content area to guide your visitors because many internet users don’t pay attention to the header or […]
I have also noticed that and that is disappointing to me as I had many of my good posts in my sidebar.
I recently plan to get my site redesigned and I am working hard on the kind of design which lays most of the emphasis on the content. I guess if I work hard so that my content stays for a longer time on the homepage then the idea may work. Having the popular posts in the sidebar although might be a good idea as it attracts readers.
To force readers to click on your sidebars one must opt for images to link to various posts or categories as that attracts the reader more..
I am also a blogger. I have tried links in sidebar. But they didn’t work as you said. For me best place in a blog is at the beginning or at the end of the post. it’s always a best practice to wrap the post with the product link.
Great post. I’m also trying to use the “in-context” text link strategy. Actually it’s something that Site Build It has been touting but I’ve been a little skeptical of it, particularly since I don’t personally like to click on in context text links (I always end up 20 pages away from where I started).
Hayley
webmaster:
Earn Money Online - OnlineMoneyStartup.com
[…] finish with a link to the inspiration for this post, which was called Don’t Rely on Sidebars and Headers to Guide Your Visitors. A closely related thought, but certainly not quite the […]