Top navigational bar link / anchor text solution- onpage question

Looking for some advice on a specific on-page scenario. I have been pushing client to link to their most important landing page from the top nav bar (so far we have a homepage body link + footer link to the landing page). They finally agreed, but instead of using target keyword as the top nav anchor text for this link, they are insisting on a generic "Learn More".

So now I am debating, do I link in the top nav under anchor text of Learn More to the landing page? It is annoying because I am not getting my desired keyword rich anchor text. Obviously this is better than nothing, but Im trying to think of a workaround.

So I am thinking of option #2 so that I can get my anchor text: do I make Learn More into a hover dropdown, in which it doesnt link out. But in the dropdown, my target landing page will appear with my desired anchor text, alongside some child pages of this landing pages so that there will be maybe another 10 links in the dropdown.

What does everyone think?

Google ignores nav links, better to interlink within pages/articles. Some people will say otherwise but I've noticed little power being passed via the nav.

Can you offer compromise options to the client i.e. "Learn more keyword", "Learn about keyword", "Read about keyword" etc? That way you both get what you want.

Other than that, I'm not sure about the user friendliness about your option #2 of a hover dropdown. What about a Javascript changing of the anchor text? That way you could have a search engine friendly anchor, but gets changed by JS in the browser. Not particularly elegant, but will do the job.

WorkingNow said:

Google ignores nav links, better to interlink within pages/articles. Some people will say otherwise but I've noticed little power being passed via the nav.

Click to expand...

I disagree. I mean I agree it should be linked to in as many pages/articles as possible, but a top nav link indicates a page's importance to Google..

secguy said:

Can you offer compromise options to the client i.e. "Learn more keyword", "Learn about keyword", "Read about keyword" etc? That way you both get what you want.

Other than that, I'm not sure about the user friendliness about your option #2 of a hover dropdown. What about a Javascript changing of the anchor text? That way you could have a search engine friendly anchor, but gets changed by JS in the browser. Not particularly elegant, but will do the job.

Click to expand...

No, Learn more about keyword would be too much text for them to handle... I will ask about Javascript option, thanks for that tip!