Will removing the main nav from the homepage penalize the site?
-
I have a client who offers residential and commercial services. We are dividing up the site into two sections that distinguish between these services and the clients. On the homepage, we ask site visitors to first choose from the Commercial or Residential services. I don't want to have any main navigation options on the homepage because they will change depending on whether you select the commercial option or the residential. Will this hurt the site in terms of SEO? Are there any suggestions of how to structure the home nav so it is not confusing to the visitor, but won't hurt the optimization of the site?
Thank you.
-
Thank you Alan, My only thoughts are that if a visitor needed to contact the company the first place they would look is the main navigation and if there is none they would be forced to select an option to continue, 'residential' or 'commercial' which may confuse or annoy site visitors.
-
Ben that's a good point - I apologize for not saying so in my original reply - so in addition to having the to large visual links, or having two large boxes on that home page, having the Home | About Us | Home Products | Commercial Products | Contact Us link nav on the home page would also be quite beneficial - both for SEO and visitors. It lends credibility and usability to the experience.
-
The links I suggested are still important, and purely having two link seems a waste of space.
You would want to have a url similar to:
www.domain.com/residential-products/category/product-one
www.domain.com/commercial-products/category/product-one
Personally I dont see any benefit to removing a perfectly good navigation bar from the homepage. you could still have the main navigation menu as I previously mentioned but make the two sections for residential and commercial products prominent on the homepage.
-
yeah let me know if you need me to provide any clarity for the design mock-up process. glad to help!
-
Thank you Alan!
-
The SEO best practice is that your home page should have links to the most important pages on the site. So technically, just linking to each of the two primary sections you are doing that, given that each section's "home" page is important. Except that means your actual residential services top level services page and your commercial services top level services pages wouldn't be linked from the home page.
Yes, you can mitigate the problem using a solution similar to how Ben describes. However, I recommend that your main Residential landing page and your main Commercial landing page actually be the Services page for each - literally where you describe those services AND link to each of the services through a sidebar navigation in addition to that sections main topbar navigation.
Make sense?
- Alan - Click2Ranks Search Team Director
-
On the home page I would suggest having a menu so search engines know other pages exists within the site, maybe something like:
Home | About Us | Home Products | Commercial Products | Contact Us
Maybe have a footer menu on all sites with: Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions etc.
In the grand scheme of things, not having a navigation menu on the homepage shouldn't be a deal breaker as long as you have an xml sitemap listing all pages on the site.
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
-
Site Hack In Meta Description
Hey MOZ Community, I am looking for some help in identifying where the following meta description is coming from on this home page - https://www.apins.com. I have scrubbed through the page source without being able to locate where the content is being pulled from. The website is built on WordPress and metas were updated using Yoast, but I am wondering if an installed plugin could be the culprit. On top of this, I have had a developer take a look for the "hack" and they have assured that the issue has been removed. I have submitted the URL in GSC a couple of times to be re-indexed but have not had much luck. Any thoughts would be much appreciated, the displayed description is below. The health screening plays http://buyviagraonlineccm.com/ a significant and key role in detecting potentially life-threatening illnesses such as cancer, heart ...
Technical SEO | | jordankremer0 -
How can i do SEO For Ecommerce site
I am doing SEO for my WP blog but now I am starting my recently launch an eCommerce site where I am selling electronics products. I want to know how can I do the SEO so at least I can top 10 position for my google India. Second how can i avoid duplicate content about copying manufacture contents. Please help
Technical SEO | | chandubaba0 -
Will rel canonical tags remove previously indexed URLs?
Hello, 7 days ago, we implemented canonical tags to resolve duplicate content issues that had been caused by URL parameters. These "duplicate content" had already been indexed. Now that the URLs have rel canonical tags in place, will Google automatically remove from its index the other URLs with the URL parameters? I ask because we have been tracking the approximate number of URLs indexed by doing a site: search in Google, and we have barely noticed a decrease in URLs indexed. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | yacpro130 -
Optimize flash site
Hello, How can we optimize a site like this - http://www.ziba.com.au/ . The whole site is in flash. What are the alternatives ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Moving Duplicate Sites
Apologies in advance for the complexity. My client, company A, has purchased company B in the same industry, with A and B having separate domains. Current hosting arrangement combines registrar and hosting functions in 1 account so as to allow both domains to point to a common folder, with the result that identical content is displayed for both A & B. The current site is kind of an amalgam of A and B. Company A has decided to rebrand and completely absorb company B. The problem is that link value overwhelmingly favours B over A. The current (only) hosting package is Windows, and I am creating a new site and moving them to Linux with another hosting company. I can use 301's for A , but not for B as it is a separate domain and currently shares a hosting package with A. How can I best preserve the link juice that domain B has? The only conclusion I can come up with is to set up separate Linux hosting for B which will allow for the use of 301's. Does anyone have a better idea?
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0 -
Can search engines penalize my site if I block IPs from some countries?
I have spotted that some countries in South America generate lot's of traffic on my site and I don't want to sell my service there. Can I be penalized for blocking IPs from certain counties? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Xopie0 -
301 an old site to a newer site...
Hi First, to be upfront - these are not my websites, I'm asking because they are trying to compete in my niche. Here's the details, then the questions... There is a website that is a few months old with about 200 indexed pages and about 20 links, call this newsite.com There is a website that is a few years old with over 10,000 indexed pages and over 20,000 links, call this oldsite.com newsite.com acquired oldsite.com and set a 301 redirect so every page of oldsite.com is re-directed to the front page of newsite.com newsite.com & oldsite.com are on the same topic, the 301 occurred in the past week. Now, oldsite.com is out of the SERPs and newsite.com is pretty much ranking in the same spot (top 10) for the main term. Here are my questions; 1. The 10,000 pages on oldsite.com had plenty of internal links - they no longer exists, so I imagine when the dust settles - it will be like oldsite.com is a one page site that re-diretcts to newsite.com ... How long will a ranking boost last for? 2. With the re-direct setup to completely forget about the structure and content of oldsite.com, it's clear to me that it was setup to pass the 'Link Juice' from oldsite.com to newsite.com ... Do the major SE's see this as a form of SPAM (manipulating the rankings), or do they see it as a good way to combine two or more websites? 3. Does this work? Is everybody doing it? Should I be doing it? ... or are there better ways for me to combat this type of competition (eg we could make a lot of great content for the money spent buying oldsite.com - but we certainly wouldn't get such an immediate increase to traffic)?
Technical SEO | | RR5000
