Regular content updates have always been key to any successful organic SEO campaign but not it is more important than ever with the recent roll out of Google’s new indexing system, Caffeine.

Big deal, right? What could possibly be so different that it will have any real impact on your already strongly positions site? Well, let me explain. The old indexing system was set up in layers, some would update faster than others but essentially it had to analyze the entire web before new updates would be seen causing significant delays between the time new information became available and when it would start to show up in a search. Now enter Caffeine. With Caffeine the system analyzes the web is much smaller segments allowing for new updates to be added to the index on a continual basis thus constantly refreshing results with the most up to date info for a given search.

From a searchers perspective, picture a deck of cards on a table and the only way to get to the card they want is by going through each card individually and sometimes upon reaching the bottom of the deck they realize that their card was not in the deck. Frustrating right? Now picture that same deck of cards but in order to access the card they want, they just through the deck in the air and the card they want lands in their hand while the other cards fall neatly back into the pile. That is essentially the difference between the way the old system worked compared to Caffeine. And with Caffeine’s faster updating, a person could just keep picking up the deck and throwing the cards in the air over and over and although sometimes their card would not be there, eventually it would. You can check out the differences for yourself at CompareCaffeine.com and if you don’t see anything significant right away, just wait a few minutes, I am sure one of your competitors will be catching up with you shortly.

Wow! Faster searches, and more relevant information, the Hell you say! I do and so what does this mean to you? It means it is time to get back into the game. No longer can you sit back on your rankings laughing gaily at your competition who is desperately trying to unseat you from your top ten Mt. Olympus. You need to get in shape and fight to keep that position. Thought Leadership is the name of the game and if your content does not support you as the authority, then some young upstart with better formed and more regularly updated content will unseat you in a quiet coup taking all you have gained.

Keeping your ranking, now more than ever, means making a commitment to regularly creating valuable content. This can be done in a variety of ways but the simplest way is by starting a blog because Caffeine checks news sites and blogs more often than it does regular site content. Got your blog set up already, great! Now make sure to augment your highly prized pros with effective cross linking through your other social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, del.icio.us and Technorati to further establish dominance over your competition.

Grab that scepter of authority and begin regaling your followers with tales of wonder with your unique content. And once you have begun, set a schedule and keep to it because although no every update will appear immediately in this brave new and highly Caffeinated world, the more regularly you make valuable updates to your content, the faster your site will be crawled going forward thus allowing you to tame the Organic SEO beast.

When it comes to SEO, content that is regularly updated is a MUST. I know what you are thinking, “yeah, yeah, you’re one to talk”. True enough but just because I have not been heeding my own advice of late does not mean that it is not sound all the same. One of the keys to any successful SEO program is regular updates. Just like with a city, you can lay all of the scalable infrastructure you like but if you do not do anything to maintain what you have created all your good work will eventually break down leaving nature to reclaim your land. The same is true of your SEO and you don’t want all of that effort to go to waste. You spent time researching keywords, optimizing your content, and tagging all of your images but unless you are regularly updating your content your rankings are slipping day by day while your competitors, who are updating their content regularly, are slowly but surely erasing your existence from the top tiers of “The” List.

Competition is fierce for decent Google placement and you need to make sure you are doing everything you can to ensure you stay where you belong – at the head of the pack. So what should you be doing?

1. Update – In order to maximize your visibility you should be updating your content at least once a week (although in this case more is better). Why do you ask? Because as I may have mentioned before, the more often you content is updated to more often the search engine spiders come back and more opportunities you have to push your competition down in the rankings while boosting yourself up on their backs at the same time…this is what we in the marketing business call a Win-Win Scenario. A blog is the perfect vehicle to help bring the Win home.
2. Diversify – Make sure that you are not putting all of your eggs in one basket. Make sure to make your updates work for you by making use of Social Media in your update process. Don’t just blog it and forget it, make sure that Tweet about your new blog posting and update your Facebook to reflect the information as well (and don’t stop there, you can keep telling two friends across a multitude of other social media networks like Digg, Del.icio.us, Technorati and more). This allows you to kill multiple birds with one stone and there are tools out there to help you automate this process. So essentially, all you would need to do is update your blog and you are able to multiply the impact of that single act across multiple networks, hitting multiple audiences (and overlapping with some) with your efforts ultimately culminating in higher search engine rankings to boot. And all it took was setting aside 30 minutes a few days a week. What a Bargain!
3. Rinse and Repeat – I may have mentioned this before, even in this posting, but it does no good to lay the foundation and leave it out from the elements. Set aside the time to make these updates on an ongoing basis and your results will build over time with not only higher Search Engine Rankings but also with higher conversion rates.

You don’t want to get left behind and you certainly do not want to be playing follow the leader. You know what they say, if you are not in the lead, the view never changes so get out in front and see what is out there.

Whenever you set out into new online marketing territory you need to make sure to consider the old when developing the new. Whether you are venturing into blogging, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Technorati, del.icio.us or any of the other myriad of social media outlets out there you need to make sure to always maximize your exposure. There are multiple ways to do this but whenever possible it is always best to get back to basics.

URLs
No matter what you do with your online marketing, the rules for SEO remain the same. The structure of your URLs in your social media endeavors are just as important as they are with your website. The more keyword rich your URLs are, the higher these items will rank on your chosen keywords in the search engines. Optimize your URLs to not only be descriptive on their own but to also include keywords that are used in the title and body of the content to further enhance your keyword density.

Keyword Density
As with your website, in order to maximize your exposure, you need to make sure that your social media content is keyword rich. Using the same keywords that you are trying to rank on for your website will give you additional links in the search engines that will help push up your rankings on the information you want out there. Not only that but while you are at it, these same social media entries will help push down the rankings of anything negative that may be floating around about your company, products or services. The more real estate you control in the search engines (with positive information of course) the better off you will be. So the more areas that you are pulling from to populate those listings the greater your chance of success in achieving the rankings you obviously so richly deserve.

Multimedia Content
Multimedia is an often overlooked area of SEO. And while it does not do as much for you as keyword rich content, it is a great way to increase your visibility. Using multimedia content in your social media posting can add a new dimension of ranking within search engines by expanding your rankings to not only work in regular website search listings in Google, Yahoo, Bing and more but also in the media listings those same search engines already offer for images, audio and video. At the same time this type of content helps open your site up to some of the media specific search engines out there like PicSearch , Blinkx and PodScope that you may not have otherwise been able to breach allowing you to increase the link popularity for your site.

The basic premise here is that when you move into other areas of online marketing, you should always remember lessons learned and try to apply them wherever you go. Leveraging this overlap between social media and SEO will enhance your SEO results and allow you to maximize your exposure.

With social media, as with many things, it is best to wade in slowly and get used to the water rather than just heading straight for the high dive and hoping for the best. There are many places where you can get your feet wet and it is best to just choose one or two to start and see where it takes you as you begin to develop your full social media plan.

Blogging
One of the biggest booms in Internet development recently is blogging. One of the reasons for this boom is accessibility. There are a number of FREE platforms out there including WordPress, Blogger, TypePad and more) just waiting for you to decide to post but the real trick is how to make the most of it. There are many ways to start blogging. Some experts suggest that having both a personal and a corporate blog is the way to go but that can be a bit overwhelming for a novice user (or even an experienced one for that matter). I would recommend starting small and work your way up. The trick with blogging is the content. You don’t want to use it as a platform simple to push your products or recent press. The best use for a corporate blog is to use it as a forum to establish thought leadership for your company in your industry. If you start talking about things that holds both yours and others interests, it becomes a win-win. You will have a place to discuss things that are important to you and while you are at it you can begin to develop a following that sees you as an authority on the topics you discuss which can lead to great things for your company.

Twitter
Twitter has bust into the scene was the place to go to learn about just about everything 140 characters at a time. If you asked any grow of people you run across you are likely to get widely varying opinions that run the gamut from “who cares what you had for dinner last night” to “this is the best thing to happen to me in years” and everything in between. But what the nay Sayers neglect to see is that as with many things in life, Twitter is what you make if it. If the only people you follow are home bound relatives, then your experience is likely to be poor, but if you follow people you find interesting, your experience will drastically change. Twitter offers the ability to mix a little more business with pleasure. You can follow industry luminaries while at the same time being able to hear what happened at that party you missed. It is a great platform for sharing blog postings (like this one @GraphicTechniq for those who are interested), PR for all the great new happenings with your company, product information, personal observations and you can even “re-tweet” interesting things put out by the people you follow.

Facebook
Facebook is the ultimate online social gathering. Where else can you connect with family and catch up with people you have not even thought about in 20 years? But Facebook offers a great deal for business as well. Companies can set up “public” profiles that allow you update your “fans” about what is happening with your company (you can check out the <a href=”http://www.facebook.com/pages/Graphic-Technique/80536624725″ target=”_new”>Graphic Technique</a> page as an example). At the same time, Facebook provides a perfect platform for customer interaction that fortune 500 companies pay big bucks to get. Interactivity is the key here. Facebook is the best example of a place where social media should be a two-way street. Offer valuable information to your fans and take their comments and use them to help you improve your products or business as a whole.

Pod Casting
Pod casting is a good way to distribute additional audio and video content such as interviews, presentations, product demonstrations, conference panels and more. And if you have regular content like a radio show or the like, you could get your audio content added to iTunes so it is very easy for your followers to find, and even synchronize you to their iPod. For video content you could set up your own channel on YouTube for easy access and these are all things that you can cross promote with other social media avenues.

There are many more social media outlets out there beyond these basics. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to determine which of these individual options (or combination there of) makes the most sense to your business. And once you figure that out, unlace those shoes, peel off those socks and come on in…the water is fine.

Giving out “Freebies” to potential customers is nothing new in marketing. From the sausage lady at the grocery store to the guy at the trade show throwing t-shirts to anyone he can see, businesses have been using the art of the FREE Gift as a means to a sales end. Social media is no different. One of the best ways to attract new leads is by giving people a reason to want to get to know you. If you offer something of value at no charge and without expectation, you can begin to develop a following of people with similar interests and some of those interests may be you.

Harnessing the power of this age-old technique sounds easy but there are some things that you need to know before you put your offer out there.

1. Create a Welcoming Environment
   Before you even consider a giveaway you need to do a little housekeeping because the real trick to this ancient art is retention. You can entice just about anyone with a free giveaway but you want to make sure that after the luster of the FREE gift has worn off, the recipients of your generous gift want to stick around. Making sure that your website is pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate will instill a level of comfort in your giftees to be and if you top that comfort off with appealing content you will be well on your way to reaching that “sticky” goal.
2. Make it Useful
   Making sure that your FREE gift is useful is another way to keep people coming back for more. Don’t just put something out there, slap an interesting title on it and “Dup” people into cluttering their hard drives with a bunch of specially packaged uselessness. If you are looking for more than just the fly-by-night internet surfer who thinks anything free is where to be, make sure that what you offer can have real use made of it. I am not saying that you won’t get those types of people showing up with their hand out as soon as they hear you are giving something away, because you will. But making something useful helps ensure that you will attract more serious people who will be more likely to stick around after the giveaway is over.
3. Provide Quality
   Just because it is FREE does not mean it should be “cheap”. Make sure that what you offer has value. Offer something that people would be willing to pay for if you were not giving it away. Offering this type of premium product for FREE will serve to enhance the value of your other content and if people like what they see, they will be inclined to come back for more and then you will have them. At that point you will either be able to sell them on your other offerings or make use of them as evangelists for your brand.
4. Offer Value
   I know what you are thinking, this is free, how much more value do I need to give them, right? Well, value means more than just cost. If you are offering a product, it should not be on an “As Is” basis. Be willing to offer some level of support for the product, after all this kind of customer interaction is exactly what you were looking for when you got into social media in the first place. Taking the time to answer simple questions or help people with bugs will go along way toward solidifying them as a potential customer, product evangelist or at very least a valuable marketing resource that you can go to when developing new products or services to offer in the global marketplace.
5. No Strings
   Many offers out there require people to jump through hoops in order to get the FREE product but in my experience, this often has the opposite effect. You will either end up with people giving you fake information or they will take one look at the requirements and leave, never to return again. Now it is not uncommon to have people register on a mailing list in order to get the FREEBIE because in these cases, building a list is the whole reason for the offer as well as the basis for the interaction you seek. The best option when possible is to give away your FREEBIE with no strings attached, but if you are going to require anything for people to get their free gift, make it as simple as possible. Name and Email address should be more than enough (and for those of you truly in the global marketplace, country might also be a good item to capture). The bottom line is, the fewer restrictions that are placed as obstacles in the way of your intended audience the better.

With these little nuggets of wisdom in mind, go forth and create the perfect FREE item that will help you build your audience. And as you establish your following you can begin developing new ways to maximize the results for your social media objectives .

So you are ready to go with your new site: You have the perfect domain, you have set up hosting, you have found a fabulous designer but you are stumped when it comes to adding the content to your site. So what do you do? Well, every site is different and what works for company A will not necessarily work for company B so that is a difficult question to answer in absolutes but when in doubt, always go back to basics. There are certain types of information that most websites have in common and they are a good start for any site outline:

Home
The home page is the place where everyone lands when they first visit your site so, as with everything else, it is important to make a good first impression. You already have a professional designer on board so the Wow factor is covered, now let’s think about the meat that supports that attractive looking garnish. At a very base level your home page should succinctly explain to visitors what you can do for them. This can be done as simply as with a clever tag line for your logo are be as involved as a paragraph introducing your services. This page should function as a kind of dashboard highlighting the most important aspects of your site whether they be having products front and center, readily available event information or the latest news about your business. You want prospects to find what they need here and allow it to lead them deeper into the site.

Product/Service
The next most important page is one that give details about your products or services. There can be many of these pages but you need to make sure that you at least have one good page that details what you can do for your prospects. And the more specifics you have about why your product/service is THE solution to the ills of potential customers, the better it will be received.

About Us
It seems pretty obvious but it is something that every site should have. Everyone wants to know who they are dealing with. This is a great place to tell prospects your company history including awards that have been received and charities that it supports. You want to make the prospect feel that they know you because the more that they feel the know you, the more comfortable they will be with you as a product/service provider.

Contact Us
It is very important that contact information is as easily accessible as possible. Prospects and clients alike want to have the ability to communicate with you if they have questions or problems. An address, phone number and email address are ideal but this is not feasible for companies that have a number of products/services and not as many people available to deal with that type of direct inquiry (especially by phone). In these cases, a contact form will do the trick. A simple form capturing Name, Email and Comments can handle a variety of different issues and allow the business owner to deal with things at their own pace without being inundated with emails and phone calls. A form of this nature can also be expanded to suit any business need and the results can be directed to someone best equipped to handle the inquiry.

With the basics down, you can begin to expand your outline to include news, events, additional product pages, additional forms, e-commerce and more. If you work collaboratively with your designer, they can help you determine the best options to show on your home page and throughout your site.

Think it Through!
No matter what business you are in, fully consider the information you want to provide your site visitors. The idea behind any site is be as sticky as possible so that once visitors arrive, they get stuck in the gooey deliciousness of your content and don’t want to leave. Once you have found the formula that works for your business then it is time to rinse and repeat. Regular updates to your site (especially on the home page) will help ensure that visitors will come back time and again to see what is new.

If you are not living under a rock and do not rely on the “Trash Heap” to give you the latest news of the day, then you have probably heard the term “Social Networking”. And while it is all the buzz on the internet, many people are unsure of what it is exactly.

So what is Social Networking anyway? Well, Social Networking, in general, occurs when individuals interact with other like-minded individuals in a social setting. But the definition of the term has morphed somewhat in recent years to refer more specifically to Online Social Networking which is the same but with a (cyber) kick. Online Social Networking occurs when these same individuals come together through various member access mediums to chat, share photos and generally connect online. There are many things online that can be considered to be social networks but for the purposes of this article we will confine the definition to connecting with individuals through things like Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In.

Ok, I get it but so what, isn’t that stuff just for teenagers? Well, not exactly. Although many of the largest social networks initially catered primarily to high school and college students, times they are a changin’. Now you will find a great cross-section of society getting involved with social networking because of how convenient it is to stay in contact with friends and family along with re-connecting with old friends that you lose touch with over time. The median age of your average social networker has been steadily climbing over the past few years. In fact, in 2008 social networking outstripped email in overall reach with 66.8% of internet users accessing member communities online compared to 65.1% for email.

So what does this really mean to you? Well as a business owner, you have an opportunity to take advantage of all this virtual water cooler milling. Make hay while the virtual sun shines. With the proliferation of these groups and their ever-increasing depth of connections to others, your message can go viral in no time at all. And the SEO potential is staggering. If you can reach one person at any of these online watering holes, that message can potentially be carried infinitely as well as being picked up by your favorite search engine with yet another golden link to your website. Think back to your favorite shampoo commercial. You get one persons attention and they’ll tell two friends and they’ll tell two friends, and so on and so on…

So how do I do it? The key to effective social networking, like with may other things, is planning. If you come up with a solid strategy for your business or product, you can hit them over and over without them even knowing it. And remember, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. The best part about social networking is that the networks themselves can interconnect to reinforce your message. Make sure that any strategy includes multiple points of contact.

As I stated before, there are a number of popular social networking sites out there but I will focus on some of the most popular:

Facebook
Facebook is the quintessential social networking site. Anyone who is anyone online is on Facebook in some way shape or form. Any business or product can set up what is known as a Fan page on Facebook. It is essentially an online profile for you business that allows you to post messages, upload photos, share success stories or even have discussions with clients and potential clients. It can be like having your very own conference room in the ether where you can post the latest information about your products and services or share your success. And the best part is that when you post a link or even just make a statement about your business, it automatically shows up in the news feed that your “fans” spend their time with every day. It is a great way to keep top of mind with current and potential clients.

Twitter
Twitter is a micro blogging platform that allows you to send updates to your “followers” 140 characters at a time. It does not seem like much, but it is enough to drive traffic to product information, blog postings or to inform “followers” of events. These quick postings are called Tweets. It is used by many as a means of communicating what they are doing “right now” but as a business medium it is growing daily to help connect businesses with potential clients, value added resellers and vendors.

Linked-In
Linked-In is the only one of the networks I have listed that was specifically intended for business use. You can add a complete profile about you and/or your company and then you can connect with people you have worked with in the past or present. The people in your network can then connect you with people in their network who are looking for someone in your field. The connections can get pretty deep so it kind of becomes like the 6 degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon but with potential business connections and who knows, maybe even Kevin Bacon himself.

Now that you are setup with your accounts, don’t simply rely on Linked-In,Twitter, or Facebook alone, use them in concert to make your messages sing. There are applications available that will allow you automatically post your Facebook Fan page status to your Twitter account (or vice versa) and Linked in will also display your tweets. And if you really want to melt your brain, set up a blog and set it to update Twitter, which can then update Facebook and Linked-In thus allowing you to post a single piece of content related to your business and have it reach multiple levels of people on multiple networks all at the same time…now talk about a Breck Shampoo moment.

The biggest thing to keep in mind when developing your Social networking strategy is that you have to update regularly to see any impact form your efforts. Social networking is not a fix it and forget it type of meal. This is the type that requires a candy thermometer and patience while you stir and stir to make sure that it doesn’t get scorched.

Finding content for your website is not so much about quantity as it is about quality. And quality content can be hard to find.

So where does quality content come from?

First things first,  lets define “Quality” in this context. Quality content is any information that your target audience will find of value and therefore want to read. Quality content can come from many sources but the best person for the job can largely depend on the subject matter. If there is a great deal of information already available on the subject, you can choose to turn to free sources (which can vary depending on the subject) or to license content from another provider. Although these options will provide you with information to fill the holes in your site, it is not likely to win clients or influence sales the way you were hoping for your online venture.

You may be the right person for the job.

If you sell a specific product that you know better than anyone else or have a great deal of experience in a certain area, you may be the best person to write your own content. The problem is that you may not have the writing chops to turn your knowledge into effective content for your prospective clients and I am not just talking about grammar and punctuation either. Sure, you need a decent grounding in those things to communicate effectively and not make your company look bad in the process but the larger issue is the ability to make the information interesting for your average intended reader. If your prose read like stereo instructions, you will lose more people even if your information is the best available source for it.

To write or not to write – that is the question.

Many people can communicate well and in an interesting fashion in text (even the ones like me who have a tendency to write like they talk) but there are an equal or greater number of people out there who should “Just Say No” to writing their own content. Once this realization occurs, it is time to bring in a professional. There are varying degrees of skills out there just waiting to be found. You can find writers with skills ranging from basic press releases all the way up to the ability to write full on technical white papers with web content specialists falling in between. And many of them can do it all end to end so you if find the right person, you can get everything you need all in one place. The thing to keep in mind though is that what you need for web content is a writer who understands how to distill information into easily consumable blocks of content while understanding enough about SEO to help increase the keyword density in your pages. Just because you find a highly skilled writer, does not mean they are automatically skilled at web content.

When it come down to it, the right person is relatively subjective, but if you are going to make the investment (be it with time or money), you have to make sure that whoever you chose is  the best one  for the job.

A very common question asked by internet neophytes and veterans alike is “how often should I update my website?”. Well, that question is kind of loaded. What do you mean? Are you talking content or are you talking design?

Even though I am a website designer, I know that when it comes to being successful, content is king. A good design is also necessary but when it comes to recurring traffic, it comes from the content. So how often should the content be updated? Well, the simplest answer is as often as possible. However often you are looking to have people return to your site is how often you should be updating it. Think about it like a periodical. If you want daily traffic, think newspaper (although you don’t have to update quite that much content, you get the idea) or if you want people to return weekly or monthly you can think Magazine. Either way, you need to offer something new to your visitors to keep them coming back. One of the simplest ways to do this is by starting a blog (like this one 🙂 )  where you are able to offer potential clients information that is useful to them. And the best advice I have heard related to blogging is that you should add at least one post a week for no other reason than to keep the search engines coming back for more.

Updating the design of your site is still necessary but does not have to be done nearly as often.  The best way to do it if you already have a solid design is in small tweaks and changes over time so it slowly changes and has more of the continual updating that works so well with content but is not as shocking to the system as a full re-design. Complete overhauls should be done at most annually and more likely every other year to keep from seeming unstable. Constant re-designs of a site is roughly akin to changing your logo constantly and have a tendency to make your business seem unstable. When it comes to a complete overhaul you just need to make sure that the new deign is fully thought through and when it comes time for the new site to launch you can get a lot of PR mileage out of layout, navigation and functional changes that can help drive new traffic as well as bringing back visitors that may have been lost over time.

No matter what type of site you run, the more often you content is updated (assuming that content is valuable), the more likely you are to see repeat visitors to your site and the more likely those people will tell others with similar interests about your site. This type of viral behavior is essential to many business sites and can be the difference between flat and increased sales. So just remember content, content, content, deign (had to throw that in there), and more content. Publish well and often you will be enhancing the success of your online endeavors.

The ability for users to find their way around a website quickly and easily is one of the most important elements of any website design. If a user cannot find what they are looking for, they leave. It is as simple as that.

So what can you do to avoid bad navigation choices?

I harken back to my days in the Boy Scouts when I heard an acronym that has served me well ever since. The acronym I am talking about is K.I.S.S. or Keep It Simple Stupid. People visiting your site should not require an advanced degree in computer science in order to figure out how to find the information they need. The easier you make it for people to find what they want, the more useful your site will become. And the easier it is to use (assuming you have what people want) the more likely you are to make the sale.

OK, then what are the keys to good website navigation?

When considering navigation for your website there are three keys that I recommend: Placement, Depth and Consistency.

Placement – Where to put the menu
The first thing to consider when designing a website is menu placement. The most common place to find primary menu navigation on a website is at the top of the page because it is the first place the majority of users will look to figure out where they want to go. The left side was the old stand by for years and with the proliferation of blogs and sites built using WordPress there are a good many out there that still use the left (and the right for that matter) but I still feel that the strongest position for primary navigation in most design structures is still the top. And while you are putting your menu there, another good practice is make the logo of your site a link back to the home page. Even if there is a Home link in the menu, 80% of people will still try clicking the logo as a means to navigate home.

Depth – How many licks it should take for people to find what they want
The biggest trick to successful navigation is to make the menuing as shallow as possible. The fewer number of clicks to get to the information people need, the better. As a rule, the more clicks it takes a person to get where they want to go, the less likely they are to arrive there on your site. Many times people just get frustrated and move on to the next site. The sweet spot is to have any available information on your site no more that two levels deep. This means no more than two clicks to find any page on your site. I can’t tell you the number of sites that I (as an experienced web developer) have gotten lost in because they were just too deep. Three levels would be a maximum but I have run into sites that can take you four, five and six levels deep all the while changing the navigation as you go so once you get where you are going, you have absolutely no idea how you got there let alone how to get back.

Some sites rely on breadcrumbs, those little tags at the top of a page that try to show you exactly where you are on the site (for example you might see something like Home > About Us > Mission to indicate you are on the mission page in the about us section), and in general these work well, but only if the primary navigation is consolidated in such a way that it is very easy to get to where you want to go without having to click the back button twenty times.

Consistency – Keeping it together
The goal with any navigational menu should be to make it as simple as possible for users to get where they want to go. A great way to do this is to consolidate your main menu and sub-menu items together so that no matter where a person is on your site, they can easily figure out where there are because when they know where they are, they are more likely to be able to figure out where they are going. Above all, once they are consolidated, leave them alone! If you change the menu items every time someone clicks, you run the risk of a bad experience that can drive users to your competitors.

The bottom line for any website is that you want your content to be read so don’t hide it.