Map with usability and SEO purpose

[Lebron27]

For my client I need to add some structure to its pages. The deepest pages are about restaurants and are sorted per city and then per province as a larger silo. I want to do this:

Homepage > Provinces > Cities > Restaurant page

This structure is optimal, but I as a usability freak I prefer making the experience cool for the users.

I want to add interactive pictures that are cool for the user and hopefully are readable for the google bots, I want to do it like this:

The homepage shows a map of my country that has the twelve provinces outlined, that light up when you hover over them. Then when you click a province you get to the province page. On the province page you see a large image of the province and see all cities where there are restaurants, when you hover over a city it grows a little and when you click it you arrive at the city page, at that page you will find a list of all restaurants that are available in the city.

What I need to know is, is it possible for google to see these pictures as a nice site structure? Or do I need to add the ugly footer links and have pages with lists of links...? And what is the smartest way to structure this, flash?

[AndieF]

Hi there,

Before I get into the SEO bit, as a user I hate this kind of thing! It always feels like 5 clicks when I really ought to just press 1. Maybe that'll influence the decision - but if not, on to the SEO...

I think as long as you have good alt text Google should be able to find your image links just fine. But make sure you also...

• Use Schema.org's breadcrumb microformatting (http://schema.org/WebPage)
• Add the pages to an XML Sitemap that is submitted to Google
• Add the pages to a nice and accessible HTML sitemap

Definately go the HTML route over Flash.

Cheers

• Andrew