I have defined an area (Admin) in my ASP.NET MVC 3 application, created _ViewStart.cshtml in that area and addedLayout = \"~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml\";
_ViewStart.cshtml
Layout = \"~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml\";
Simply specify a blank area for them if they are to be served from root controllers:
<li>@Html.ActionLink("About Us", "About", "Home", new { area = "" }, null)</li>