How do I reduce internal links & cannibalisation from primiary navigation?
-
SEOmoz tools is reporting each page on our site containing in excess of 200 internal links mostly from our primary navigation menu which it says is too many.
This also causes cannibalization on the word towels which i would like to avoid if possible.
Is there a way to reduce the number of internal links whilst maintaining a good structure to allow link juice to filter through the site and also reduce cannibalization?
-
Hi Marcus.
That sounds like a good Strategy. I am going to look at different structure on our dev site and see what works best overall from both technical and more importantly the customers point of view.
I'll definitely have a look at he apps you mentioned. They seem really interesting.
Once again, many thanks for your advise. Really helpful indeed
Regards
Craig
-
Hey Fraser,
taking a quick look again, you have a three tier nav, so you could just simplify it so it is only a two tier nav.
So,
Bed & Bath
- Bath Linen
- Bedroom
Embroidery
- Towels
- Bathrobes
- Kids
- Sports & Spa
The others all seem to just be a single depth anyhow so this could make the main sections of the site easily navigational and you still have your sub navigation which you could then maybe highlight a lttle more in the design.
So, if someone clicked on Towels, we would have the highlighted section and sub nav but if we maybe boxed it and added a header of something like
Browse Towels - Hand Towels
- Bath Towels- etc
My advice would always be to try it, see if it works out for you and improves any metrics you are tracking. Maybe install something like Crazy Egg heatmaps or click tracking so you can see how people are using the current nav (if at all) vs the sub navigation.
Certainly, a sub navigation is a convention, amazon etc use it, so people are used to this way of browsing. Just make sure your design shines a light on what you want people to do and I don't see any usability issues.
Hope this helps!
Marcus -
Hi Marcus,
That's is correct for our site.
I had thought of this and agree its technically the easiest way to deal with this, however I wonder how problematic it would be for the customer if they were trying to navigate say from a product to another category completely, there would be no easy way to do this. I am not convinced that the customer would use the breadcrumb trail to do so.
Maybe there is a way of utilising the primary navigation but limiting the number links from it.
Thanks for your help.
Craig
-
Hey Fraser
Is this your site: www.towelsrus.co.uk?
If so, the simple answer here would be to lose your drop down menus and give that a go. You already have a sub menu on each page once the user clicks through and a breadcrumb so someone can easily anchor themselves within the site should they land on one of these pages.
You then have a sub navigation on the primary category pages that allows people to navigate down to the long tail sub category pages like this one: Egyptain Cotton Hooded Bathrobes - which I am sure does not need to be linked to from every single page.
That should be technically easy enough and will make for a better overall site structure which is still easily spiderable via the sub navs. Equally, the canibalisation is likely not as big an issue as it appears but you will be removing multiple instances of keywords from the nav so that's not going to hurt.
I would give this a read:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-many-links-is-too-manyHope that helps!
Marcus
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
AMP - The what, why and how of it
Hi There, In our company, we never had AMP implemented on sites that we SEO for. We want to start doing that now. I know the basics of AMP and their requirements, however, I need to know a lot more about it from an SEO perspective of this before I actually get developers onto it. I want to know all the 1) risks involved, 2) the best ways to implement it (plugin etc.), 3) why it is worth it. I also want to know how to see if a developer knows what he is talking about - and really will do it the right way without messing me up? Are there any specific questions I should ask, or information he should be aware of? Also, is there a way for it it be done for pages that have more than just text like quote forms, sliding headers etc.? Should we only do it for the blog section of our site? I would greatly appreciate any links to additional resources on this topic, (not why to use AMP, but everything else) I greatly appreciate you taking the time to answer my question
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ruchy0 -
How Do You Do Link Building??
I am starting to use the Moz pro tools like optimizing on page SEO for keywords and looking for opportunities. I know link building is a huge part for getting rankings on keywords in google search. Where do I start and how do I do the link building process for specific keywords I can rank for?? Thank you in advance for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wickerparadise1 -
GWT - Links to website - Are they accurate
Hi I am looking at GWT more and more and I starting not to believe the information within it. For example we had a link on XYZ.com say 6 months ago. This link as been removed no reference to our website, however it still showing on GWT inbound links. I have noticed quite a few sites which have no relevance to our site. Is anyone else finding the information wrong in WMT
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Internal Links - Dofollow or Nofollow and why?
Hey there Mozzers, I am a question about internal links. If I am writing a article about something and want to link to another one of my articles inside my blog, do i have to make that link nofollow or dofollow? If possible tell me why also. Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis0 -
Internal links and URL shortners
Hi guys, what are your thoughts using bit.ly links as internal links on blog posts of a website? Some posts have 4/5 bit.ly links going to other pages of our website (noindexed pages). I have nofollowed them so no seo value is lost, also the links are going to noindexed pages so no need to pass seo value directly. However what are your thoughts on how Google will see internal links which have essential become re-direct links? They are bit.ly links going to result pages basically. Am I also to assume the tracking for internal links would also be better using google analytics functionality? is bit.ly accurate for tracking clicks? Any advice much appreciated, I just wanted to double check this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Are Navigation links different to static links
We are trying to reduce the number of links on our homepage. We could remove some fly out navigation links, We rank 1st on Google for some of these links. Would removing these hurt our SEO. The links are accessible 1 level down if we remove the homepage.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Archers0 -
Can pages compete with each other? Inbound links & domain authority, How to determine problem areas?
Heyy, I'm having some pretty big SEO issues. 😞 We have had some drops in our ranking. We're 5th page or worse depending on location for a few of our keywords that we used to rank well for. There are all sorts of random non relevant sites outranking us for the term "stickley" and "stickley furniture" One thing I noticed is that we are ranking for a different page for each keyphrase. Our home page is ranking for "Stickley" and our stickley page is ranking for "Stickley Furniture" Is this normal? I guess Google is just picking what it see's as what's more relevant. Is it possible that these two pages are "competing?" Do similar phrases linking to different pages cause pages to "fight" or unevenly disperse link juice? I'm having trouble knowing which page I should send inbound links to since Google seems to be linking similar keywords to different pages. How much should I stress about which pages I receive links on? Is it true that any inbound link to a site site will help increase its overall domain authority and overall SEO? What should I be focusing on? I've added 301 redirects for non WWW as well as tried to make the pages well optimized for SEO. Should I just add more related content to the pages? I know backlinks are important but I'm having a really hard time figuring out how to get links that aren't just spammy forum post footers or junk directory submissions. The thing that bothers me is we were ranking well and then suddenly are way back. We have never done any black hat SEO of any sort. I feel a bit stuck and confused at the moment 😞 Thanks in advance for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SheffieldMarketing
-Amy0 -
Does the home page must get the biggest amount of internal links?
Hi All, I have an e-commerce website with thousands of unique pages. The site is built with quick access through the navigation bar to the main product categories. All of the product pages have navigation trees in them.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
What happened is that in one of the main categories I have so many pages (products) that it actually gets more links than the home page - it is getting the links both from the menu (in each page in the site) and from the product pages that belong to that category whereas the homepage gets only the one link from the menu. Is that OK or should I add a level in the navigation tree that points to the homepage? Thanks0