Menu setup
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I'm looking for feedback on menu structure to be SEO friendly. This is setup with ubmenu. What I am gathering is that because of the amount of items it could cause issues with google because it is exceeding the maximum links per page, currently the come shows 153 links. I'm not sure what to do since people search for all these terms in the menu, but I don't want to be penalized. also saw this http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/127191-SEO-Simplifying-Navigation-Cuts-Performance so im really confused.
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You need to think about the end-user. Especially the mobile end-user
I would personally get rid of the drop downs make part of your navigation go to its own page which then holds the URLs for that category.
Drop downs are hit or miss. You don't want a menu that's too complex for the end-user there the person you have to think about. Google has relaxed its rules but thinks about large websites that have very simple menus. Look at Moz.com for instance. It is doing exactly what should be done for menus
Put the important stuff at the beginning. Avoid drop down menus, avoid filling the entire side of every page with the same static links.
You have to think of the way Google crawls a website and your crawl budget. Where Google is crawling the same URLs over and over again. Googlebot will stop crawling your site earlier if it has to crawl the same URLs or than once. ( unless you are a Fortune 500 brand)
On your site using a mobile device you should place your navigation at the top of your page, not in the middle it's very confusing on mobile.
See:
http://www.responsinator.com/?url=www.familychristiandoors.com%2F
You can use this tool to test mobile navigation
Examples of very large sites with excellent navigation.
Example of well-made large menus
- https://www.admiretheweb.com/articles/20-responsive-mobile-navigation-inspiration/
- https://www.usertesting.com/blog/2014/06/17/the-navigation-treasure-trove-37-menu-usability-resources/
- https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/website-navigation/
- http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/main-website-navigation-ht
- http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/optimize-website-navigation/
- http://searchengineland.com/mega-menus-seo-228827
- https://blog.kissmetrics.com/common-website-navigation-mistakes/
- https://moz.com/blog/301-redirection-rules-for-seo
- https://youtu.be/QHG6BkmzDEM
- https://moz.com/community/q/is-a-mega-menu-with-over-300-links-in-it-hurting-my-rankings
** Crawl budget reference**
- https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/optimize-crawl-budget-tips-examples/
- https://moz.com/community/q/crawl-budget
- https://www.deepcrawl.com/case-studies/elephate-fixing-deep-indexation-issues/
I hope this helps,
Tom
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