Are dropdown menus bad for SEO
-
I have an ecommerce shop here: http://m00.biz/UHuGGC
I've added a submenu for each major category and subcategory of items for sale. There are over 60 categories on that submenu. I've heard that loading this (and the number of links) before the content is very bad for SEO. Some will place the menu below the content and use absolute positioning to put the menu where it currently is now. It's a bit ridiculous in doing things backwards and wondering if search engines really don't understand. So the question is twofold:
(1) Are the links better in a bottom loading sidemenu where they are now?
(2) Given the number of links (about 80 in total with all categories and subcategories), is it bad to have the sidemenu show the subcategories which, in this instance, are somewhat important? Should I just go for the drilldown, e.g. show only categories and then show subcategories after?
Truth is that users probably would prefer the dropdown with all the categories and second level subcategories, despite the link number and placement.
-
Someone has an answer to this simple question? I have the same doubt.
-
My question is mostly directed about the impact on search engines, not about clickthrough ratios, etc. although I appreciate the comments. I've decided to potentially offer a submenu on the top horizontal area instead of optionally placing it on the side, which may not be as obvious. Some say it's fine there but let's say the submenu seemed like a good offering. The issue is whether all those links placed before content will have an effect on SEO. I have seen repeatedly discussions about how having your most important content up at the top as high as possible is most important. Having this many links above the main content is a big question mark - and that's the question here:
Q: Since a submenu will have at least 70+ links in it, is it an SEO liability if it is placed before the main content on a page loads?
-
Another point is the way the menus display and the speed in which they drop down. Along with the colours of the text which can also be a very important factor in click through ratios.
-
You want to link to as many pages from the home page as possible. Gary makes a good point that people do think they have to choose a child menu item when they see a dropdown.
But as a SEO point of view drop downs are fine. And as I said get as many pages linked from the home page as possible
http://perthseocompany.com.au/seo/tutorials/a-simple-explanation-of-pagerank -
I would say you will not have any problems from an SEO point of view but from my experience showing new clients and people new to sites with the drop down menus they can be misleading.
The drop down reveals the pages but the main page that is acting as the parent of the other pages is sometimes overlooked as people don't realise they can still click on that.
I speak to people on the phone - hundreds of people and show them sites and time and time again I have to remind them they can click on the main parent button .
We are considering changing this as a result.
-
I believe that google is smart enough to tear the wrapper off of a website in a way that leaves naked content.
While a lot of people do what you are proposing and may gain some benefit from it, I think that the benefit is very small.
It's another case (in my opinion) of allowing the minute details of SEO to have an undo level of control over how you run your website.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Image upload SEO tips?
Is there anything I can do to my images other than naming them correctly to have with SEO? Size? File type? Maybe adding text on top of them to pick up OCR? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jamesmcd030 -
SEO question
Hi there! I'm the SEO manager for 5 Star Loans. I have 2 city pages running. We are running our business in 2 locations: Berkeley, CA & San Jose, CA. For those offices we've created 2 google listings with separate gmail accounts. Berkeley (http://5starloans.com/berkeley/) ranks well in Berkeley in Gmaps and it shows on first page in organic results. However the second city page San Jose (http://5starloans.com/san-jose/) doesn't show in the Gmaps local pack results and also doesn't rank well in organic results. Both of them have authentic backlinks and reviews. It has been a year already and it's high time we knew the problem 🙂 any comment would be helpful. thanks a lot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moonalev0 -
SEO Benefit to SSL Certificate
Our site does not have an SSL certificate. I have read that in the process of adding one of URLs need to be redirected and that some link equity can be lost. Implementing an SSL certificate sounds somewhat complicated and far from risk free. Is there a tangible SEO benefit to upgrading to SSL? Will doing so help SEO in a tangible manner that justifies the cost, time and aggravation? Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan12 -
SEO transfer to new website
My website currently has some strong SEO and i will be re-developing the website on a wordpress platform...which will change many of the existing URL. Will this affect the current pages that are well indexed in Google? Does using Wordpress or changing the URL extension (.html to .php) make a difference? If i want to make a clean transition without effecting our existing SEO...what are some essential steps i need to take? Example. Current page is www.mydomain.com/name.html .... and the new URL would be www.mydomain.com/product/name.php Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Souk0 -
Really bad technical SEO and Nofollow
I posted a question week ago about a client with really awful SEO errors to the tune of over 75k violations including massive duplicate content (over 8000 pages) and pages with too many links (homepage alone has over 300 links), and I was thinking, why not try to nofollow the product pages which are the ones causing so many issue. They have super low domain authority, and are wasting spider energy, have no incoming links. Thoughts? BTW the entire site is an ecommerce site wth millions of products and each product is its own wordpress blog post...YIKES! Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | runnerkik1 -
Files blocked in robot.txt and seo
I use joomla and I have blocked the following in my robots.txt is there anything that is bad for seo ? User-agent: * Disallow: /administrator/ Disallow: /cache/ Disallow: /components/ Disallow: /images/ Disallow: /includes/ Disallow: /installation/ Disallow: /language/ Disallow: /libraries/ Disallow: /media/ Disallow: /modules/ Disallow: /plugins/ Disallow: /templates/ Disallow: /tmp/ Disallow: /xmlrpc/ Disallow: /mailto:myemail@myemail.com/ Disallow: /javascript:void(0) Disallow: /.pdf
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Do interstitials hurt SEO?
If you go to www.homeportfolio.com and click on one of the links in the footer. you'll notice you are presented with an interstitial. Can you tell me if that hurts our SEO and if we lose any link juice or suffer in any other way as a result of this linking method? my main concern is whether having anchor text that says "bathroom ideas" that goes to an interstitial that doesn't mention bathroom ideas is non-relevant... even if it refreshes 12 seconds to a page that is.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KaplanSEM0