Navigation
-
I've been wrestling with this one for a while. Take a standard small web site navigation with nav links for:
-
Products
-
Solutions
-
Support
-
Learning Center
I believe having drop downs to show the sub-pages of each category provides a better user experience, but it also bloats my links per page in the navigation from 4 to 24. Most of the additional links are useful for user experience, but not search purposes. So, 2-years after Google's changing of how it treats nofollows (which used to be the easy answer to this question), what is considered best practice?
A) Go ahead and add the full 24 nav links on each page. The user experience outweighs the SEO benefits of fewer links and Google doesn't worry too much about nav links relative to main body links.
B) Stick to only 4 nav options. Having 20 additional links on every page is a big deal and removing them is worth the user experience hit. I can still get to all levels of this small site within 2-3 clicks and do cross category linking to mitigate silos.
C) Use some technical voodoo with js links or iframes to hide the nav links from Google and get the best of both worlds.
D) Do something that is not one of the first three choices.
Does anyone feel strongly about any of the above options or is this a user-preference type of situation where it doesn't make much difference which option you choose on a small 100-200 page site?
I'm really looking forward to everyone's thoughts on this.
-DV
-
-
Thanks, Alan, you captured the dilemma perfectly. UI is important and SEO is important, so how does one quantify the pros and cons of each in the planning stages of a site. It's really kind of an educated guess.
I tend to lean towards your assessment for all of the reasons you cite. I'm in a competitive keyword space. So while I put a lot of weight on UI issues, I'm not inclined to ignore SEO opportunities for just minimal UI gains.
-
Derek
There are hundreds of factors right, so there's no way to know with 100% certainty in advance what the SEO hit would be with the nav change. Any single change could have a significant impact, yet if all other core SEO factors are optimal, it might not have any impact at all. Without testing, no way to know.
Personally I prefer to avoid the possible hit when I recommend nav to clients just because I do want to squeeze out every last ounce of value and honestly, if a site really only has 20 - 30 nav links, it's not such an inconvenience to users to have to click a main nav link and then find the sub-nav in each section as long as it's visually presented well.
If the information provided is highly relevant, that one extra click is not going to hurt the site.
-
Interesting point about duplicate content. I suspect I'd have less of an issue with 20-30 links, but I could definitely see where DC could become a problem with larger navs. I like the breadcrumbs idea too.
I'm wondering if I'm placing too much emphasis on the too many links issue. However, to me it seems like a huge advantage to funnel link juice where I want it with well placed internal links in the body of content. I've had good success with this before. I would think that these targeted links would carry significantly more juice if I can reduce the number of links per page from 30 to 10 --- all by eliminating 20 nav links to less important pages. It just feels like a big SEO performance hit to me to have 200% more links in the nav? Am I wrong? Does Google not flow much link juice through nav links?
-
Derek
I encounter this scenario a lot on sites with not 24 but 100 or more links in that drop-down setup. Here's what I've found.
A) User Experience MAY be improved, however only heat-map and click testing can prove if this is the case or not, and only when you do a/b split testing on the two versions of navigation. Sometimes giving people these choices is only barely helpful unless you also supplement this with additional user experience signals to help someone know where they actually are, especially when they come directly into the middle of the site.
B) From an SEO standpoint, it's not so much a "too many links" issue for distributing individual link value. It's more a case where if you have all those links on every page of the entire site, at the code level, every page becomes slightly more diluted (all the extra text and words in the code) from a single-page topical focus issue. You also have more of a duplicate content potential (the top area of the page now has a lot more "content" that's not unique on every page of the site.
The way to address this, if you believe the site-wide drop-down nav is important, is by taking the following action:
-
Be sure you have proper microformat coded breadcrumb navigation directly within the top of the main content area on each page. This both helps users know more readily where they are in the site's content grouping and topical separation scheme, but also provides reinforced signals to search engines about content relationships that you lose with the top drop-downs.
-
Even with the top drop-downs, it's still beneficial to include section-specific navigation in a sidebar. When a user has so many choices on every page of the site, it's easy to get lost in knowing which drop-down to use. Not always, yet can be an issue. Giving them the alternative that's always visible within each section, and unique to each section reinforces ease of navigation for those who prefer it. It also communicates to Google topical relationships between all the pages in the section those side navigation links show up in.
3) You may need to increase the depth of the actual content area descriptive paragraph based unique content.
-
-
I see where you are coming from, but with each required click you lose users. There are definitely times where I would sacrifice some usability for the sake of traffic, but accessibility is everything.
You are right on the mark with the give and take of SEO and user experience.
-
Thanks for the reply, but please allow me to play devil's advocate.
I generally subscribe to users first mantra too, but is using subnavs on category pages vs. full dropdowns on every page a huge user experience hit? Taken to extremes, always choosing either a users always first approach or a SEO always first approach is not optimal. There has to be some measure of balance even if you lean heavily towards the users first approach (as I generally do).
Is there no meaningful benefit to removing from every page 20 links that provide no additional SEO benefit and only serve to dilute the impact of other more important links? Or, do you think that using full dropdown navs provides a truly significant user experience benefit?
-
A. You have to create it with users in mind. It will also help the site's connectivity which is good for SEO. Above all else the site should be easy to navigate for users.
-
I should add that the 24 link scenario already includes consolidation of related topics, so the answer can't be more consolidation!
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
-
Important category pages that can and should be found in SERP but can not be reached by navigating on the webshop itself
Hi, On a webshop we are optimizing, the main navigation consists of the 5 main categories to which all of the products can be assigned. However, the main tabs in the navigation just activate a drop down with all of the subcategories. For example: the tab in the navigation is 'Garden equipment' and when you click on this tab, the drop down is shown with subcategories like 'Lawn mowers', 'Leaf blowers' and so on. Now, the page 'Garden equipment' is one of the main category pages and we want this page to rank of course. This shouldn't be a problem, since there is a separate URL for this page that can be indexed and that can be reached through internal links on the website. However, this page can not be reached when a visitor initially comes on the homepage of the webshop, since the tab in the navigation isn't clickable. This page will only be reached when a subcategory is selected, and then when the visitor goes back to the category page through the breadcrumb or through an internal link. Is it a problem that these important overview category pages can not be reached immediately? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C0 -
Question regarding Site and URL structure + Faceted Navigation (Endeca)
We are currently implementing the SEO module for Endeca faceted navigation. Our development team has proposed URLs to be structured in this way: Main category example: https://www.pens.com/c/pens-and-writing/ As soon as a facet is selected, for example "blue ink" - The URL path would change to https://www.pens.com/m/pens-and-writing/blue-ink/_/Nvalue (the "N" value is a unique identifier generated by Endeca that determines what products from the catalog are served as a match for the selected facet and is the same every time that facet is selected, it is not unique per user). My gut instinct says that this change from "/c/" to "/m/" might be very problematic in terms of search engines understanding that /m/pens-and-writing/blue-ink/ as part of the /c/pens-and-writing/ category. Wouldn't this also potentially pose a problem for the flow of internal link equity? Has anyone ever seen a successful implementation using this methodology?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danatanseo0 -
Does Navigation Bar have an effect on the link juice and the number of internal links?
Hi Moz community, I am getting the "Avoid Too Many Internal Links" error from Moz for most of my pages and Google declared the max number as 100 internal links. However, most of my pages can't have internal links less than 100, since it is a commercial website and there are many categories that I have to show to my visitors by using the drop down navigation bar. Without counting the links in the navigation bar, the number of internal links is below 100. I am wondering if the navigation bar links affect the link juice and counted as internal links by Google. The Same question also applies to the links in the footer. Additionally, how about the products? I have hundreds of products in the category pages and even though I use pagination I still have many links in the category pages (probably more than 100 without even counting the navigation bar links). Does Google count the product links as internal links and how about the effect on the link juice? Here is the website if you want to take a look: http://www.goldstore.com.tr Thank you for your answers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onurcan-ikiz0 -
Mega Menu Navigation Best Practice
First off, I'm a landscape/nature/travel photographer. I mainly sell prints of my work. I'm in the process of redesigning my website, and I'm trying to decide whether to keep the navigation extremely simple or leave the drop-down menu for galleries. Currently, my navigation is something like this: Galleries
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shannmg1
> Gallery for State or Country (example: California)
> Sub-region in State or Country (example: San Francisco)
Blog
Prints
About
Contact Selling prints is the top priority of the website, as that's what runs the business. I have lots of blog content, and I'm starting to build some good travel advice, etc. but in reality, the galleries, which then filter down to individual pages for each photo with a cart system, are the most important. What I'm struggling to decide is whether to leave the sort of "mega menu" for the galleries, or to do away with them, and have the user go to the overall galleries page to navigate further into the site. Leaving the mega menu intact, the galleries page becomes a lot less important, and takes out a step to get to the shopping cart. However, I'm wondering if the amount of galleries in the drop down menu is giving TOO many choices up front as well. I also wonder how changing this will affect search. Any thoughts on which is better or is it really just a matter of preference?0 -
How should I manage duplicate content caused by a guided navigation for my e-commerce site?
I am working with a company which uses Endeca to power the guided navigation for our e-commerce site. I am concerned that the duplicate content generated by having the same products served under numerous refinement levels is damaging the sites ability to rank well, and was hoping the Moz community could help me understand how much of an impact this type of duplicate content could be having. I also would love to know if there are any best practices for how to manage this type of navigation. Should I nofollow all of the URLs which have more than 1 refinement used on a category, or should I allow the search engines to go deeper than that to preserve the long tail? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FireMountainGems0 -
Site Navigation
Hi Mozzers, I am an SEO at uncommongoods.com and looking for your opinion on our site nav. Currently our nav & URLs are structured in 3 levels. From the top level down, they are: 1. Category ex: http://www.uncommongoods.com/home-garden 2. Subcat ex: http://www.uncommongoods.com/home-garden/bed-bath 3. Family ex:http://www.uncommongoods.com/home-garden/bed-bath/bath-accessories Right now, all levels are accessible from our top nav but we are considering removing the family pages. If we did that, Google could still find & crawl links to the family pages, but they would have to drill down to the subcat pages to find them. Do you guys think this would help or hurt our SEO efforts? Thanks! -Zack
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | znotes0 -
Faceted navigation, Affiliate links, Meta descriptions - Oh My!
Hi, I have recently come across an issue with the faceted navigation / dynamic URLs for one of my client sites: From a top level category you can filter by product material, size, type and colour. The URLs which are generated go a little something like this: www.domainname.co.uk/category.aspx?finish=leather&colour=--+no+filter+-- When selected, a 'facet' 302 redirects from the main category URL (no canonical tags in place yet - working on it). The 'facets' are indexed (although when clicked on from SERPs actually go to a slightly different URL than by navigating there from the site) but they don't display the Meta description in SERPs (instead displaying a list of items from a drop down menu held within a table - probably as it's the first bit of copy the search engines see on the page). How can I get the Meta description to display in SERPs? Also, I tried to add a link to a 'facet' from my blog (just for testing purposes) and I got redirected to the page via their affiliate program. Ideally I want to 'link build' to these pages both internally and via the clients blog but it seems as though there'll be no value in it. Has anyone come across this before and if so, what can I do about it? FYI they are using IIS 6 with asp.net Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WalkerM0 -
What <h>Tag to Use For Global Navigation</h>
I've read several blogs discussing how including more than one H1 per page is a serious no no. However, what is the most effective <h>tag to use for your global navigation system. Or should it not be an <h>tag period?</h></h>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | calin_daniel0