SEO and Main Navigation Best Practices
-
I've read a number of articles on SEO and main navigation for websites.
I'd like to get a solid answer/recommendation to help solve this one. This is the situation.
We're helping a local business that offers pest control and property maintenance services. Under each of these, there area a number of services available, eg, cockroach control, termite inspections or lawn mowing services, rubbish removal and so on.
Is it best to have a main nav containing the top keywords for the services - Pest Control | Property Maintenance, with a drop down to the services under each. Or, a simple approach - Our Services > drop down to each - Pest Control > Termite Inspections, etc. My concern here is that they have quite a lot of services, so the nav could be way too long.
Really appreciate any assistance here. Many thanks.
-
Thanks for this.
Great idea. I always have my Wife take a look. Will extend that to the teenagers and my parents. That will tell a lot.
Great tip! Cheers.
-
Another good way to test, grab your family, kids, friends etc..
Tell them to goto your site and find something, then ask them how easy was it and find out what wasn't easy an adjust.
Do this with at least 5+ people and you can have some actionable insight on what to alter.
-
Hi,
Thanks so much. It can be become a little too much as services are added, particularly in pest control, you could have dozens there.
I have actually created what you've suggested in the main nav but, will move the others over to the top service page as you say.
Really appreciate your help, thanks again.
-
Hi Richard!
We work with a lot of home service (HVAC, pest control, landscaping) companies and from our experience we've found that (like Tymen mentioned) dropdowns are ok as long as you don't make them keep dropping out further and further. It also depends on the amount of services you are trying to fit in the navigation.
Majority of our clients' websites' top level navigation would have - About | Landscape Maintenance | Landscape Design/Build | Portfolio | Contact - or something about those lines. Under "Landscape Maintenance" we might include Lawn Mowing, Irrigation Services, etc., in the drop down, but instead of continuing to add to the drop down, we would only link the top priority services from the drop down and list additional services with internal links from the main Landscape Maintenance page.
On our HVAC clients we might have "Heating" listed at the top most link in the navigation that has a drop down to Furnaces and Heat Pumps, and then we would include another drop down that includes links to the Installation, Maintenance, and Repair pages for both these services. I would only recommend doing double drop downs if your navigation doesn't include many services. For instance, if you have a bunch of services listed under Heating that ALL have an additional drop down, it could negatively impact user experience.
We try to pair down the main navigation to be as simple, but helpful/effective as possible, and include links to additional (less prominent) services from other landing pages instead of trying to jam pack everything in the top level navigation.
I hope this helps you figure out how to pair down the services!
-
Thanks Tymen,
Yes, drop downs are not the best solutions these days.
Will take a look at the site and see what we can do.
Thanks!
-
Hi Richard,
I would completely stay away from drop downs. You often get problems with different browsers and mobile. For main navigation you could go for: Home> What we Do> Who we are> Contact. Next to that I would work with a sidemenu or footermenu in which you have all the services. For example you could take a look at www.aliexpress.com. This way the visitor can navigate easily and all the serbices are visible on the homepage for visitors and Google.
Good luck! Tymen
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
-
International subdirectory without localized content - best practice / need advice
Hi there, Our site uses a subdirectory for regional and multilingual sites as show below for 200+ countries.
Local Website Optimization | | erinfalwell
EX: /en_US/ All sites have ~the same content & are in English. We have hreflang tags but still have crawl issues. Is there another URL structure you would recommend? Are there any other ways to avoid the duplicate page & crawl budget issues outside of the hreflang tag? Appreciate it!0 -
Page Title Local SEO - 2 places
Hello guys, I am from azores are 9 islands in portugal. I live in São Jorge is one island. My question is. If one person seach by Azores Canyoning or São Jorge Canyoning. Because Azores is one region and São Jorge is one island inside Azores. And i want have this two exact keywords in title page. Canyoning is a service. Azores Canyoning - São Jorge Canyoning | Brand Name what is best way to write this title? Or is not good?
Local Website Optimization | | Flaske0 -
SEO for Franchises - Subdomains or Folders?
Wondering if there ever has been any recent consensus on best SEO strategy for a Franchise. I feel it is safe to assume that just having one corporate website with a "store locator" that just brings up the address, phone and hours of a location is not optimal. Yes, the important thing is to get a Google Places for Business listing for each location so you can come up in the 3-pack and regular Maps result, BUT, the rankings for the 3-pack is largely determined by the site's authority and relevance to the specific search term used, IN ADDITION TO, the proximity of the business to the search user's physical location. Apparently it is widely believed that domain authority does not transfer from www.mycorporatedomain.com to somecity.mycorporatedomain.com. And of course we also know there is a potential for a duplicate content penalty, so you can't just duplicate your main site for a number of locations and change the address and phone number on the contact page. If the products and or services are identical for each location, then it's going to be somewhat ridiculous to try and rewrite many sections of the website since the information is no different despite the location. It seems in general more people are advocates of putting location pages or micro-sites in a subfolder of the corporate domain so that it can benefit from the domain's authority. HOWEVER, it is also widely known that the home page (root URL) of any domain carries more weight in the eyes of Google. So let's assume the best strategy is to create a micro-site where phone and address is different anywhere they appear and the contact page is customized to that location, and the "Meet The Staff" page is customized to that location. The site uses the same style 'template' if you will as the main site. Let's also assume you can build a custom home page that has some different content, but still shares the same look and some of the same information as the main site. But let's say between the different phone, address, and maybe some different images and 20% of the content rewritten a bit, Google doesn't view it as dupe content. So would the best strategy then be to have the location home page be: somecity.mycorporatedomain.com and the product and services pages that are identical to the main site you just use a rel canonical to point to the main site? Or, do you make the "home page" for the local business be a subfolder of the main site. So I guess what it boils down to is whether or not the domain authority has more of an effect compared to having a unique home page on a subdomain. What about this? Say the only thing different on the local site is the contact (phone/address) in the header and/or footer of every page, the contact form page, and the meet the staff page. All other content is identical to the corp site, including the home page. I think in that case you need to use a script to serve the pages dynamically. So you would need to server the pages using a PHP script that detects the subfolder name to determine the location and dynamically replaces the phone and address and server different contact and staff pages. You could have a vanity domain mycity.mycorporatedomain.com that does a 301 redirect to the subfolder home page. (This is all ofcourse assuming the subfolder method is the way to go.)
Local Website Optimization | | SeoJaz0 -
What is the SEO effect of schema subtype deprecation? Do I really have to update the subtype if there isn't a suitable alternative?
Could someone please elaborate on the SEO effect of schema subtype deprecation? Does it even matter? The Local business properties section of developers.google.com says to: Define each local business location as a LocalBusiness type. Use the most specific LocalBusiness sub-type possible; for example, Restaurant, DaySpa, HealthClub, and so on. Unfortunately, the ProfessionalService page of schema.org states that ProfessionalService has been deprecated and many of my clients don't fit anywhere else (or if they do it's not a LocalBusiness subtype). I find it inconvenient to have to modify my different clients' JSON-LD from LocalBusiness to ProfessionalService back to LocalBusiness. I'm not saying this happens every day but how does one keep up with it all? I'm really trying to take advantage of the numerous types, attributes, etc., in structured data but I feel the more I implement, the harder it will be to update later (true of many things, of course). I do feel this is important and that a better workflow could be the answer. If you have something that works for you, please let us know. If you think it's not important tell us why not? (Why Google is wrong) I understand there is always a better use of our time, but I'd like to limit the discussion to solving this Google/Schema.org deprecation issue specifically.
Local Website Optimization | | bulletproofsearch0 -
Local SEO question
Hi I was wondering is there any specific rules for Local SEO for a service company which provides a service in a variety of cities but only has one physical location. For example is it ok to target the other cities in Title Tags or would this be frowned upon? Regards
Local Website Optimization | | TheZenAgency0 -
What is the Best Keyword Placement within a URL for Inner Location Pages?
I'm working on a website with 100s of locations. There is a location search page (Find Widget Dealer), a page for each state (Tennessee Widget Dealers) and finally a page for each individual location which has localized unique content and contact info (Nashville Widget Dealer). My question is is related to how I should structure my URL and the keywords within the URL. Keywords in my examples being the location and the product (i.e. widget). Here is a quick overview of each of the 3 tiered pages, with the Nashville page being the most optimized: Find Widget Dealer - Dealer Page only includes a location search bar and bullet list links to states Tennessee Widget Dealers - Page includes brief unique content for the the state and basic listing info for each location along with links to the local page) Nashville Widget Dealer - Page includes a good amount of unique content for this specific location (Most optimized page) That said, here are the 3 URL structure options I am considering: http://website.com/widget-dealers/tennesee/nashville http://website.com/dealers/tennesee-widget-dealers/nashville http://website.com/dealers/tennesee/nashville-widget-dealer Any help is appreciated! Thank you
Local Website Optimization | | the-coopersmith0 -
Does building multiple websites hurt you seo wise? Good or bad strategy?
HI,rategy. So I spoke to a local Colorado seo company and they suggested to find whatever keywords is the most searched under my GWT's and put .com behind it and build other sites for other keywords. I was curious about this type of strategy. Does this work? This seo guy said I could just get a DBA bank account and such for each domain name etc. I am not wanting to mislead anyone, but I am curious if for the sake of promoting other services, if creating other websites with partial and EMD's are worthwhile? Another issue I worry about is if I put my companies phone number, then next thing you know there is 3 or 4 sites that use that same phone number. To me this does not build trust with Google. But being I am learning, maybe this is a common strategy, or doomed from the start. Just curious what you think. Would you build other sites to try and rank for other services? Or keep one sites and maximize it? Thank you for your thoughts. I just do not want to pay $3000 per site if it will hurt not help.
Local Website Optimization | | Berner0 -
One location performing worse than the rest despite no major difference in SEO strategy
Hi all, I'm flummoxed. I'm dealing with a business that has 15 or so offices in three cities, and one city is performing horribly (this includes every office therein). The other two cities have shown consistently stellar results with massive traffic increases month over month for the past year; the city in question dropped unexpectedly in June and hasn't ever recovered. We didn't perform any major website changes during or immediately prior to that time period, and the website in general hasn't been negatively affected by Hummingbird. All locations for the business are optimized in the exact same way and according to best practices; there's no significant difference in the number of local listings, reviews, G+ fans, social signals, etc across locations. All meta data and content is optimized, NAPs are all consistent, we've built links wherever we can: the SEO for every location has been by-the-books. We've run a competitor audit in this particular city that included pulling our top competitors and exploring their domain authority, meta data, on-page keyword grade for the term we're trying to rank for, number and type of inbound links, social signals, and more; and we didn't spot any patterns or any websites that were significantly outperforming us in any area (besides actual rankings). It's frustrating because the client is expecting a fix for this city and I can't find anything that needs to be fixed! Have any multi-local SEOs out there run into a similar problem? What did you do about it?
Local Website Optimization | | ApogeeResults0