Using Anchor Link in the Main Navigation
-
Has anyone ever used anchor links as a drop-down in a sub-collection from the main navigation and does it have any negative impact on link equity?
My client has large product collections and sub-collections, these are then separated into further subsections which are open within the same page (see attached). What I want to do ideally is in the main navigation feature 'Mad Hatter Costumes and Accessories'. This will obviously have a # in the URL though and I am was wondering if this might hurt the chance of the page ranking?
If anyone has any experience in this it would be really helpful!!
Thanks in advance
-
Not a problem
-
Agree with you on entirely on optimising for the conversion, which is why I was looking at this solution in the first place. It's a case of balancing between the UX and the ranking I suppose!
Thanks for your thoughts and help.
-
depends how many of these you're planning to have. In any case, the loss (which may occur) should be very fractional and not super damaging. If you lose 0.05% traffic but gain +2% conversion rate, then really you're winning overall. Sometimes good SEO involves making a decision that slightly hurts the 'purist' SEO, in order to focus on revenue and 'real business' KPIs (which matter more, which bosses care about more)
As long as you can reason the trade-off which you made and it falls in your favour (overall), then you have done a good job
Your bigger problem is that these new links may push other links further out of the user's reach and / or further down the code / page. If this happens, other links may not supply quite the same SEO authority which they did before
I certainly think your proposal is worth testing. Measure both the CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) and SEO impacts. If overall you take in more $, then the fact that SEO has a slightly bruised cheek is really just a matter of vanity. Think with your business head
-
Thanks for your response!
Do you think you would lose the equity from the link being in the main navigation though? In theory, it would still point at www.domain/subcollection but it would then also have a hashtag at the end of the URL as well and I don't know if that would impact my subcollection from ranking?
-
AFAIK this has no negative impact on SEO, but is symptomatic of another issue which does impact SEO. Putting too much stuff, or too much content on a single URL - thus 'diffusing' Google's ability to nail down 'the primary topic' of the URL (which can make it rank badly)
It's not the anchor links that cause the poor rankings though, it's the ill-thought out information architecture and site design (IMO)
Google won't rank those anchor URLs by the way. Just the main page. But it's not like you'll get some kind of crazy anchor using penalty or something, that doesn't exist
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
-
Using my Adwords budget
Hi, I have a huge budget for adwords but I only seem to be using about 1/10 of it daily. How to I go about using more budget but also keeping my conversion costs and % around the same? And should each campaign have its own set of unique keywords? Should these keywords never appear in more than 1 campaign? Any tips on maximising budget and increasing conversions would be great. Thanks
Conversion Rate Optimization | | YNWA1 -
What is the best mid-level link bait case study that you know about which gained 300+ links?
Just opening this up really - looking for inpiration besides the obvious posts that you see ranking online... What is the best mid-level link bait case study that you know about which gained 300+ links?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Turkey0 -
Can using the Google Keywords tool and/or SEOmoz cause problems for my company's IP address?
I just started with a company a few weeks back, working on-site doing SEO work. I've been using SEOmoz as well as Google Adwords' Keywords tool. I just got a message from one of our reps saying that people at the office (and this is a huge office) have reported tons of CAPTCHAs being thrown up frequently. I told them I had been running searches with Google Keywords tool and SEOmoz, but would that really cause that much of a problem? Is there anything I can do in order to fix this, some keyword finders that won't get me in trouble, etc.?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | SmokewagonKen0 -
A/B Testing. What do you use?
About to do some A/B testing (conversion improvement) for multiple clients. There are so many solutions out there. Does anyone have any suggestions. A/B testing will be done for both SEO & PPC Campaigns.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | waqid0 -
Adblock Plus blocking Sponsored Link listings?
Been wondering for a while why sponsored links were not showing on my firefox browser, I had previously been running Adblock as an addon to stop ads on youtube, etc. As a test I disabled it and like magic adword links are showing again. Assuming programmes like this will get larger, and seemingly include adwords in the ad's it targets, would that be the end of effective PPC advertising? I have run other ad-blockers before and not lost the paid links. It's not an unpopular program, and the target audience reduces everytime somebody new installs it. Mountain out of a molehill or a genuine future problem?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Revolution_Inc0 -
14,000+ links a to one site - is this a problem?
First, thanks to those who have helped me before. Second, according to Google Webmaster there are about 14,765 external links to my site. According to Open Site Explorer I have 22. So a couple of questions: 1. Why such a discrepancy? 2. Of the 14,765 links shown in Google Webmaster 14,665 are all from one place and all link to my home page. The site is interiordesignproductfinder.com. In August of this year I bought a sponsorship there. There are several of these sponsors so which show up on a rotating basis. Will having 14,765 links all of a sudden showing up be grounds for some type of a Google downgrade? Why are there 14, 765 links instead of just one. Is a new link created every time our sponsorship rotates to the page? Another thing, in the past couple of months our conversions have dropped significantly. we average about 180 visits a day with a 50% bounce rate. Is there anything obvious thatt might have caused this drop? Thanks for any insights. Don www.uniquegiftsanddecor.com
Conversion Rate Optimization | | uniquegifts-2778790 -
Is it possible to extract the exact USER search terms used on adwords campaigns?
Suppose I have a adwords campaign, with an adgroup targetting the broad match term "cell phones". Is it possible to get metrics on the exact keywords users have used to create ad impressions, clicks or conversions for that campaign? Many thanks
Conversion Rate Optimization | | James770 -
Using overlay content on landing pages - possible? recommended?
We want to use an overlay, like a modal dialog, in a landing page to show more information to support conversion without linking to another page or using popups. Anyone have any stats on success or risks? We've considered simple roll-overs to provide some more info, but everyone has raised alarms that we may be introducing a potential technical or usability hurdle for users. The overlay would display when someone rolled over or clicked a "Learn More" link on the page to provide additional offer reinforcement points to drive the visitors from consideration to conversion. Aside from our own testing, we don't have any sources to cite as to whether this approach can or will impact or aid conversion. Any insights would be appreciated.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | lh27121