Jump to menus is a cool feature that Google has been working on. This feature allows your visitors to jump to a certain section of your long article or post. It saves the visitor on the scrolling time and it also makes your SERP stand out from the rest. This has been made possible by the use of Anchor Tags as Google is crawling the anchor tags for this to happen.
A jump menu can contain the following components:
- Menu section prompt, category description for items or instructions, this is optional
- A list of linked menu items which a visitor has an option of selecting of them, this is required unlike the Menu Section prompt
- A Go button, this is also optional
This is only ideal for long articles and thus people can jump to what they are looking for faster. The links are generated algorithmically. Ensure that your post is well-structured and that it can be broken down into logic sections. Each section therefore, must have an associated anchor with a descriptive name. The post should have a table of contents linking to the individual anchors.
This can be implemented as per the example given below taking into consideration that the page titles and anchors are relevant to the traffic you are receiving.
This example is on how to install windows on Flash Disk. First, create a table of contents and prepare anchor ID’s to insert to the article;
<h2>Table of Contents</h2> <ol> <li><a href="#install-from-flash-disk"> Install from Flash Disk</a></li><br> <li><a href="#install-from-CD">Install from CD</a></li><br> <li><a href="#install-with-Wubi">Install with Wubi</a></li><br> <li><a href="#instal-in-EXT3">Install in EXT3 Partition<a ><br></li> </ol>
After doing this, you have to prepare your anchor points using the “a id”
<a id="Install from Flash Disk"></a> <a id="Install from Cd"></a> <a id="Install with Wubi"></a> <a id="Install in EXT3 Partition"></a>
A jump to menu can also be created in the Dreamweaver which is quite simple unlike the coding above. All you have to do is create a new html document and insert a form area to it. The next thing to do is insert a List/Menu form by clicking on the insert button, select form and click on List/Menu. After doing this, the next step is to apply a Jump To java script to your List/Menu item. This is achieved by going to the Tag Inspector Menu, Click on the Behaviors tab, select list menu and click on the “+” button and select Jump Menu.
This causes a new window to pop up, where you add options for your drop-down jump menu. To add a new link press on the “+”, type the option name in the text field and enter the URL that you would like to jump to in the next field. When done, click on the OK button to save it. This is way easier for someone who is not skilled on html coding and has knowledge on the Dreamweaver. The Jump To Menu is pretty amazing and you should try tweaking your articles using it.
