Site navigation menu in head of page for SEO

[Peter264]

We are considering expanding our site navigation menu (horizontal) at the top of our pages.  However, once implemented, this would include around 30-40 links at the top of the page; before the content of the page.

How much effect (good/bad) would this have on SEO?

Are their any other options? (perhaps rendering the menu after the main content with CSS)?

Any thoughts, suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[ninjamarketer]

Boxed navigation is becoming pretty common navigation style these days. Many large corporations such as Rackspace, IBM, and Cisco use this format.

Best practice is to have on average not more than 150 outbound links on the page so try to maintain your on page links around this number.