Good Site Navigation verses Success
-
I have been experimenting with the number of links on our pages verses the number of hits we get. Success seems to be tied to having hundreds of links on a page verses ease of navigation.
We have a research company that sells research on educational topics. Last November I decided to divide our category of literature research topics into 10 different subtopics and redistribute the links to the subtopic pages. The main literature research page had over 800 links on it. It was one of our top performing pages. I was hoping that by spreading the links out in logical categories i could distribute the wealth and have better navigation for the user. Now after 6 months the traffic to that page has dropped 800% and the sub-pages have only gained a very minimal percentage. Overall, the hits in the literature genre have dropped from 560 per month to around 80. Ouch!
I thought Google would love this strategy, as it reduced page load time, links on a page and made the navigation logical and easier to see all available options. Not the case.
Question is: Should I keep the subpages but go back and put all the links back on the main literature page, putting it back up to 800 links? Should I get rid of the subpages, because the links will all be on the main literature page if I move them?
Any advice is appreciated!
Karen
-
Good idea Journeyman. I started to wonder if it is maybe the actual sub catagories that I chose rather than the structure. I'll dig into that more.
Thank you!
Karen
-
Hi Karen,
8 months is a long time when you're in the throes of Google. Your problem might not revolve entirely around your navigation.
However in answer to your question - are they the right subpages?
Personally I'd do a card sorting exercise to determine which sub categories your users are expecting to see. You can normally back this data up with some keyword research to see which sub category type terms are generating a lot of search volumes.
For example if you've got a page called "English Literature 1800-1850" and more people are searching for "Romanticism period in English literature" then maybe you've got the wrong subpage.
It is a bit of work, especially joining up the keyword research with the card sorting but at least you'll know that you've got the right sub categories.
Hope that helps at least a little.
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
-
Tracking down rel="canonical" on Wordpress site
A rel="canonical" is being added to every page and post on my Wordpress site - not tag results, not category results. Not a major problem, right? Except that I don't know where it's coming from. I've tried tracking it down - change the theme back to a default one, turn off all the plugins - it's still there. Is it coming from .htaccess perhaps? The only issue it is causing is that it has causes me to have to turn off the canonical option in Platinum SEO as that was resulting in two identical rel=canon on each page. It doesn't seem to be causing problem but I'd like to get a better understanding of what it going on.
On-Page Optimization | | robandsarahgillespie0 -
Site is too slow? Seeing a new code.
Site is too slow. I am seeing this new code more than 1000 times in my home page- What should I do now? My site- http://a1stlucie.com/
On-Page Optimization | | Beachflower0 -
Help finding someone to handle crashing site/site optimization.
I need someone who can handle website/WordPress issues as they come up.For example, my site has gone down 4 times tonight, and my host can't figure it out. They also keep recommending that I optimize my site, but I don't know how. I need a go-to web person for this sort of thing. Any recommendations?
On-Page Optimization | | cbrant7770 -
E-commerce site product descriptions and duplicate content
Hi everyone. I'm developing an e-commerce site using Prestashop and concerned about the issue of duplicate content among product descriptions. My main concerns are: If there are 500 or more products and those product descriptions are obtained from a manufacturer or supplier's website hence running into external duplicate content issues. Internal duplicate content is also an issue, if there are multiple similar products and each product has the same description across several pages. What would be the best approach to eliminate the possibility of incurring a duplicate content penalty due to similar product descriptions? I've already considered the suggestion of noindex-ing the complete range of products to help protect from duplicate content penalties and having unique articles written in the site blog discussing products instead linking to certain products on the site. Another consideration I had was noindex-ing all product pages except pages for featured products in the store and rewriting descriptions for a set amount of those featured products regularly (this will still have the problem of internal duplicate content across pages if similar product descriptions are rewritten). The product range is intended to be very large so I'm really seeking an alternative solution from the insane task of rewriting many product descriptions. Any suggestions to make SEO work efficient are very much welcome and appreciated. Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | valuepets0 -
Hi.. Can a E-commerce site have a Google Authorship.
Hi Can a E-commerce site have a Google Authorship, and if yes i have learned google requires a face for Google Authorship, as they are applying Facial recognition with the authorship. If So, how can an e-commerce website have an individual's face. ?
On-Page Optimization | | usef4u0 -
Do I need a robots meta tag on the homepage of my site?
Is it recommended to include on the homepage of your site site? I would like Google to index and follow my site. I am using WordPress and noticed my homepage is not including this meta tag, therefore wondering if I should include it?
On-Page Optimization | | asc760 -
On-Site Optimization and Repeat Customers
Hello, One of my clients has repeat customers. All of his surface level categories are optimized. None of his 2nd or 3rd level categories are optimized at all. Is there any harm in optimizing these 2nd or 3rd level categories. Is there any way it could cause a problem with repeat customers? I didn't think so but I want to make sure. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Webmaster tools Site speed?
Google webmaster tools site performance is reading out at 2.8 and still raising (Going further into the slow pale area) this was in the green fast area for a while until now. Is this something to be worried about?
On-Page Optimization | | BobAnderson0