Should the primary navigation use keyword rich menu items?
-
There doesn't seem to be a definitive (or even authoritative) answer to this.
The quandry is primary top navigation - the client wants to use 2-3 keyword length nav items, and I'm politely forcing him to use single word nav. The problem is that I have nothing to back up that assertion other than "this way looks better".
Examples -
Site is www.buybluewidgets.com. The client wants:
- About Our Blue Widgets
- Buy a Blue Widget
- Azure Widget Information
- Sell Your Blue Thingamajig
My suggestion is:
- About Us
- Buy
- Learn
- Sell
-
I agree with Irving. Over optimization of sitewide anchor text links is a big no no and there is definitive documentation about the penguin update.
Here is a great article on the topic: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/recovering-from-the-penguin-update-a-true-story
Does your client actually think that visitors to the site won't understand that About Us actually means About the Blue Widget Company?
Perhaps a quote from Google Webmaster Guidelines is in order:
"Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit."
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769&topic=2370419&ctx=topic
-
Since those are sitewide links you don't want your main anchor texts to be repeated over and over, so i would go with your suggestion to avoid over optimization. I would still link in content with those keywords but I would mix it up and vary the anchor texts, and not do sitewide keywords like what the client wants, unless you do it one maybe one link only.
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
-
Keyword optimization when two keywords mean the same thing
How does one best go about optimizing a page, meta title, and meta description for two keyword when the two keywords mean the same thing (e.g. attorney vs. lawyer). It's awfully tedious, obnoxious, and spammy-looking to keep putting "attorney/lawyer," "attorney-lawyer," or "attorney or lawyer" into content, titles, and descriptions.
Web Design | | micromano1 -
How do we get search engine bots to the item detail pages?
The problem we have is that we have lots of inventory pages. These inventory pages have a bunch of links at the top linking to different styles of the item, up to 56 links in some cases. Then each item listed has a link to the item's detail page and a link to the item's shop owner's page. So if a page has 50 items shown, there are really 100 links just for the inventory. This is not taking into account the header links, footer links, sidebar links to other sections on the site. We have all these links to help consumers move through the site. The problem is that every item detail page on the site is not getting indexed and actually I think it's more like over 50% of the item detail pages are not indexed because the search engines are too busy following all these other links. Should we nofollow, index the links to the different styles of the item, the shop owner page? Or what should we do to get the search engine bots to index our item detail pages?
Web Design | | CFSSEO0 -
Is there a best practice for using a general iso code for the EAME region and APAC region or should you break it out by country?
I am creating a strategy for multiple regions and the US comes to market different than EAME (Europe, Africa, Middle East) and China. We were planning on using language and iso codes in subfolder's but the corporation only wants their content to be in German, English, and Queens English. Our current decision is to use /en-US/, /en/, /de/, /en-CN/, /zh-CN/. /en/ and /de/ will be what we use for EAME. This doesn't seem like the best idea as I think /en/ will get indexed as the US version and not the EAME version. Any suggestion or if clarification is needed is greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | GodfreyB2B0 -
Wordpress drop down menu issue...
While I am tweaking my current site with getting rid of my footer links, my site will not allow a drop down menu for my service area parent page. It will do a drop down menu for any other tab. Could not find anything in a google search besides just link to parent for drop down... Any ideas?
Web Design | | greenjoe0 -
Is Anybody using any of those Shopping Cart? Do you recommand them?
I want to move my existing online store, ( osCommerce) http://www.filtrationmontreal.com/ to a new SEO friendly Multilingual shopping cart. Does anybody use one of the following and tell what is there appreciation on it. Americommerce CoreCommerce Pinnacle Cart Ashop Thank you for your help, BigBlaze
Web Design | | BigBlaze2050 -
Basekit.com anybody using it?
I need help to built a mulitlanguage website. After posting questions, I most admit Wordpress with a premium template might be the options for all the features I need. Thoses are: SEO Frendly (custom links...html...Alt Tag...Metadata...)
Web Design | | BigBlaze205
Mobile Version
Great Template
Multilanguage Complete web site
Google Analytics
Blog
301 redirect Some one suggest basekit.com Do you thing it might be my solution? Thank you for your help. BigBlaze0 -
What value could you expect from the use of schema.org metadata?
Google , Yahoo and Bing have now teamed up to develop unified Meta data standards for all types of content. I personally see this as the next step to larger world-wide knowledge availability. Why is this a big deal?
Web Design | | andrewwolf
If everything comes together, and every page had perfect markup, the answers to users questions could be answered and validated against the information found on every website that had that answer. Example: Who is the author of "The catcher in the Rye" 11345 Websites Result : J. D. Salinger
301: Websites Resulted : Jake Salinger Best Result: J.D. Salinger -> Contact J.D Salinger -> Bio etc. Information would become the link , user's navigation intent becoming the Anchors. Here is the URL of the different types of metadata schema's found on google's new schema.org http://schema.org/docs/schemas.html Creative works: CreativeWork, Book, Movie, MusicRecording, Recipe, TVSeries ... Embedded non-text objects: AudioObject, ImageObject, VideoObject Event Organization Person Place, LocalBusiness, Restaurant ... Product, Offer, AggregateOffer Review, AggregateRating What are the benefits of the different categories of metadata being used? Can anyone site specific case studies done on the enhanced SERP results shown as a result of this metadata?0