Do links in the nav bar help SEO?

[SEODinosaur]

If I am building a Nav bar should I use my keywords or make it easier for the user to find what they are looking for. IMO one should ALWAYS make a site based on user experience.

If it Google and other SEs do count Nav links, would it be best to place more important keys first?

[paulbaguley]

Hi Donnie

The best ways to optimise a navigation bar is with rich keywords but these keywords must still be relevant to the content that it is being linked to so when the user does click there are not clicking to a different page on your site or even a different website.

I hope this helped but if not then click on the link below about internal linking.

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/internal-link

[SEODinosaur]

Well thats the thing. From a user stand point its god to have an "ABOUT US" as a first link and a "CONTACT US" rather than "ABOUT US" being "MAIN KEYWORD" and "CONTACT US" Being "MAIN KEYWORD QUOTE"

On one hand users look for an about us page and a contact us on the Nav. However these terms are not helping with SEO.

According to Matt Cutts its better to target a user rather then a (Published on Apr 2, 2012) robot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHYA5gAsRBA&feature=player_embedded

I wanted some SEOmoz opinion on the matter.

[waqid]

Dont spam your nav bar with keywords. Use about us, contact us and home as your nav links because users are used to seeing them. To add descriptive tags to your links use the title attribute on your href links

About Us

services

[SEODinosaur]

Ahh Genius! Thank you!!

[Dr-Pete]

One thing I'd keep in mind is that a lot of your main nav pages aren't always great landing pages for search users. "About Us" is a decent landing page for finding out about your company (and that or the home-page should rank fine), but it and "Contact Us" aren't usually good bets for your non-brand keywords. It's often better to have a dedicated page targeting separate services.

I think it's fine to use keywords for the "Services" page, or you could split that page into specific services. Then, each service would have a keyword-targeted internal link and content. In that sense, think of your services like products - you branch from a main "store" page to categories to individual products. Done well, it serves both users and SEO.

[Dr-Pete]

There's nothing wrong with doing this, as long as the "title" attribute is accurate (DON'T spam it with non-relevant keywords), but I haven't seem compelling evidence that it acts as a ranking signal.