Text-Based Navigation in ASP.NET Core MVC | SEO Link Best Practices for Developers

Published 23/07/2026

Description

Learn how text-based navigation improves SEO and usability in ASP.NET Core MVC by making your internal links easier for both users and search engines to understand. Google says links should be crawlable by using a elements with href attributes, and it recommends anchor text that is descriptive, concise, and relevant to the destination page. In this video, I walk through what makes navigation crawlable, why real HTML links matter, and how better anchor text helps search engines understand your site structure. Google’s link best practices explain that visible link text should give context about the linked page and that the surrounding words also help clarify meaning. 0:00 - Introduction 0:10 - Description 2:30 - Basic Text based 4:08 - Conclusion What you’ll learn: Why text-based navigation matters for SEO and accessibility. Google uses links to discover pages and understand relevance, so crawlable navigation helps search systems find and interpret content more effectively. Why JavaScript-only or non-standard links can be risky. Google states it can reliably crawl links when they are standard a elements with href attributes. How to write better anchor text. Google recommends descriptive, concise, relevant anchor text and specifically warns against generic phrases like “click here.” Why link context matters. Google says the words before and after a link help provide additional meaning, so anchor text should fit naturally into the sentence. How this fits naturally in ASP.NET Core MVC. MVC-generated navigation usually maps well to clean HTML links and structured internal navigation, which aligns with Google’s crawlability guidance. This episode is useful for developers who want their site navigation to be both technically clean and search-friendly without overcomplicating the markup. Google also advises against chaining too many links together because it hurts readability and reduces useful surrounding context. #SEO #ASPNETCore #TechnicalSEO