Have you organized your blog’s main navigation menu? Your blog menu is one of the most important elements on your website. However, one of the mistakes bloggers make is not paying attention to blog menu design.
This mistake can impact how site visitors perceive your website and how search engines understand your content.
Organizing your blog menu means thinking about what your site visitors experience and need from you. It’s about making a strategic decision about how readers move through your site’s content.
Your navigation menu influences:
- What readers click on
- How long they stay on your site
- Whether they decide to explore further
With your blog menu, you want your site visitors to understand what your blog offers within seconds.
It’s also important for SEO and your site structure, indicating to search engines what content is important for better rankings.
Want to organize your blog menu with intention?
This post takes you through key considerations for blog menu structure, how to organize a blog menu and create an easy-to-navigate website for site visitors.
What Is Blog Menu Design?
Blog menu design is how you structure, label and prioritize the links in your blog’s navigation menu.
It includes key strategic decisions like:
- What pages to include
- How many items appear in the menu
- The order of menu items
- How blog categories (and sub-categories) are grouped
Your goal is to create a menu that’s clear, intuitive and aligned with your blog’s purpose.
Having a good website menu design for your blog helps your readers:
- Understand what your blog is about at a quick glance
- Find the topics they’re interested in
- Explore more of your content.
Why It’s Important To Have A Well-Structured Blog Menu
Let’s look a bit deeper as to why having a solid, well-designed blog menu is important:
Your Readers Understand Your Blog Quickly
Let’s face it: time is precious. People click through sites very quickly. They want to know if it’s worth their time to spend time on yours.
The first place they will look, other than the home page content, is the navigation menu. Do this test yourself. Check out a blogger’s website and look at what you do in the first few steps. Most likely, if you’re using the desktop version, the first thing your eyes do is skim the navigation menu at the top.
A clear menu helps readers understand:
- Your blog’s main niche and themes
- Your niche expertise and blog focus
- Where they can start: no confusion as to what’s the most important content
Readers Discover More Of Your Content
One of the structural mistakes many new bloggers make is to hide content throughout the site.
When it’s hard to find your blog content, your readers leave your site. Make it easy for them to discover more of your fantastic blog posts.
Your blog menu is the best place to showcase:
- Your cornerstone content
- Top blog categories and sub-categories
- Special offers, resources and other core pages
It Supports Your Blog’s Business Goals
Your blog navigation menu should reflect what you want readers to do next.
These could be:
- Reading more blog posts
- Join your email newsletter list
- Explore your additional resources
- Work with you
- Purchase your products
Always go back to your blog/business goals: what do you ultimately want your site visitors to do and experience?
It Improves The Site Visitor Experience
Having a clear, well-developed navigation menu is part of good website design.
Keeping your blog’s navigation menu simple and easy to browse makes readers comfortable. It creates the impression that your blog is professional.
Ultimately, readers will visit longer, and may even come back for repeat visits.
How Blog Menu Design Supports SEO
Good blog menu design also helps with SEO. Search engines will crawl your navigation menu, checking your links. A well-crafted blog menu helps search engines index and understand your site structure.
A navigation menu is one of the top linking structures on your website, helping search engines understand how it’s organized and which pages are important.
Links placed in the navigation menu get authority passed down from your most powerful page – your homepage (link equity).
A good blog navigation menu also supports SEO by:
- Improving your top content discovery. A well-thought-out menu helps search engines discover your cornerstone posts and category pages easily.
- Supporting user experience signals. An easy-to-navigate blog results in visitors spending more time on your site, exploring multiple pages (i.e. a lower bounce rate).
NOTE: Your navigation menu alone won’t help determine your rankings. Having a good blog site structure, along with a well-designed blog menu, can help search engines understand your site better.
How to Organize Your Blog Navigation Menu
Now that you have a good idea of why it’s important to create a blog menu with intention, let’s look at how this is done.
Start With Your Blog’s Main Goal
You’ll be tempted to start including pages and categories in your blog menu. However, it’s best to look at your blog’s primary goal.
If you have a personal blog, your navigation menu will look different from one that is for a blog-based small business.
Your goals are different: personal bloggers aim to drive site visitors to read blog posts. If you’re a solo business owner, your primary goal is to sell products and perhaps services.
Let’s look at the blog menu organization tips that work for different types of blog sites.
Content-Focused Blogs
Your goal with a blog content-focused blog is to help readers discover posts. For this, your navigation menu may include:
- Blog
- Categories (usually a dropdown under “Blog”)
- Start Here (your cornerstone post or a page with top posts on a core subject)
- Popular Posts (the best of the best)
- Guides (additional material your readers will find useful)
The focus is on content discovery. This is where many new bloggers start, and it’s 100% OK to focus on this for the first year of blogging as you grow your audience.
Service-Based Blogs
With a service-based blog, like a coaching or freelance consultant blog, your goal is to convert site visitors into customers.
Your menu priorities may include:
- Work With Me/Services
- Portfolio or results
- About
- Blog
Your focus shifts to showing your expertise and what you offer. Your blog is no longer front and centre, but it’s still a powerful marketing tool that showcases your topical expertise.
Blogs Selling Digital Products
What should go into a website menu if your goal is to sell digital products?
In this case, your menu priority is to promote and place those digital products first.
Your menu may look like this:
- Shop or Products
- Courses
- Resources
- Blog
- About
- Contact
You can see how the menu places emphasis first on the products, prompting the site visitor to check them out first.
What to Include in a Blog Menu
One of the most common questions new bloggers ask is about what to include in their blog menu. And what can they include in their footer?
Here are the essential core pages and additional links that work best in a main navigation menu.
Core Pages
Most blogs include a few foundational pages in their main navigation menu, including:
- Home
- Blog
- About
- Contact
These core pages help to:
- Orient readers to the website (Home page; Blog)
- Provide context about the blogger (About page)
- Allow readers or brands to reach you (Contact page)
If you’ve just started a blog, these are the minimum you need in your blog navigation menu.
Your readers have been conditioned over the years to expect these on websites.
Blog Categories
Once you’ve been blogging for a while and your blog content is growing, it’s time to make it easier for site visitors to find specific content.
Adding your blog categories to your blog menu makes it much easier for:
- Readers to quickly find topics that interest them
- You to organize your content by topics
Categories are broad topics that work under your niche topic that your blog is focusing on.
For example, a solo travel blog for women could include:
- Solo Travel Tips
- Travel Destinations
- Travel Product Reviews
Blog categories should be nestled under your main “Blog” link. To do this in WordPress, you will need to add the categories to the main list and place them under “Blog”.
PRO TIP: Learn about setting up your WordPress menu and creating hierarchies for your categories.
Key Guides Or Resources
This is a very smart strategy if your core goals are to build credibility, grow your email newsletter subscriber list and monetize your website with digital products and affiliate marketing.
Here’s what can be included in your main navigation menu:
- Start Here
- Resources
- Beginner Guides
- Tools I Use
- Free Resources
These can be your top cornerstone content beyond blog posts and free lead magnets for your email newsletter list.
Resources can be digital products you’ve created and are selling. A tools page is where you can promote your affiliate links.
Links to these kinds of key pages help you build authority, attract followers and potentially customers or clients, depending on your building model.
Offers, Services Or Products
For business-focused blog websites, the menu needs to include key pages like these ones:
- Work With Me
- Services
- Coaching
- Courses
- Shop
Make it easy for readers to understand what you offer. You will want to place these core pages up-front.
How to Organize a Blog Menu
There are a few key rules for setting up the order of your blog menu links and how they’re organized.
One key thing to remember is that readers naturally scan from left to right.
Here are a few blog menu best practices:
- Place your most important link first
- Group similar items together. Use dropdowns.
- Keep the number of main top menu items manageable to 5 to 7 maximum
- Place secondary items toward the end of the navigation menu list.
- Use the footer menu for legal pages (Privacy Policy, etc.)
- Place additional, less important pages in a footer menu.
Review your Blog Menu from a Reader’s Perspective
A smart blog menu design process includes considering what the site visitor will experience the first time they visit your website.
Here’s what I would do to make sure my blog menu works the way I want it to for site visitors — I ask myself:
- If somebody lands on my blog for the first time, what do they see?”
- Can they easily find topics in my blog menu?
- Have I made it clear what this blog offers?
Another thing I do is have somebody else review the menu contents and order. Having a fresh pair of eyes on your website menu can provide you with a new perspective. You’ll learn which menu items are unnecessary or confusing.
Common Blog Menu Mistakes to Avoid
As you work on your website navigation menu, make sure you don’t make these common mistakes:
- Too many menu items. Keep it to 5 to 7 in the top level of your menu. Use dropdowns smartly to add more menu items in clusters.
- Don’t use vague labels like “Resources”. Include a word that provides more context. For example, “Blogging Resources.”
- Avoid long labels. “Blogging And Business Resources” is too long, taking up valuable menu space.
- Don’t hide important pages in dropdowns. Try to include them in the top level of your menu.
- Avoid creating similar categories. This makes it harder for you to distinguish them in your menu.
- You don’t update your menu as it grows and evolves. Keep it up-to-date for your site visitors.
Website Navigation For Blogs: An Important Consideration
Now that you have a good idea of why you need a well-organized blog navigation menu, your next steps are to:
- Decide on which pages and links are the most important for your blog goals
- Create a navigation structure breakdown, including dropdown links
- Set it up in your menu
- Test it, including asking a friend to review it with a fresh pair of eyes
Don’t forget to review your menu and update it as your blog goals change and your blog grows.
Struggling with your content’s organization overall? Learn how to create a blog content plan that helps you determine pillar posts and topic clusters.
QUESTION: What are your questions about creating a blog navigation menu for your website?
