Internal Linking - in content vs navigation menu

[AdamThompson]

Would like to get some thoughts on whether navigation menus or in-content links are best for internal linking, from an SEO standpoint.

A few thoughts to get started with:

1. For sites with a lot of content, you can have a navigation menu linking to your higher-level pages, then in-content links to deeper pages on your site. For smaller sites, this is not an option, as the navigation menu will probably link to all your important pages. You could add in-content links, but Google only counts the first link on the page, so the in-content links would be ignored if you'd already linked yp the page in your top nav menu.
2. I can think of several possible reasons navigation menu links could be less desirable than in content links from a Google perspective. (They are sitewide boilerplate content without context.)
3. If you setup your navigation structure based on what is best for the user, small sites don't have much wiggle room to optimize internal link structure, as all their money pages will be linked to from the top nav menu.

Do you think Google prefers in content links to navigation menu links?

If so, how do you get around the fact that for many sites, all their money pages are being linked to from their main navigation menu?

[Andropenis_Australia]

Don't get caught up on what google does or does not tell you.

If you can find a relevent place for a link to be placed in the content, then do it. If it's helpful for the user then do it.

Generally, google will only count one link per page in terms of passing the juice to it, but if the same link is used in content it will still count somewhat, because the content is obviously relevent to the link that is placed, that in itself is a yes vote.

Good luck

[Solvari]

Agreed. Think it's most important that your internal linking makes your site as user friendly as possible. Sites that have obviously only placed internal links for search engines can be very annoying.