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
-
We changed our domain, I used the move tool in Google Search Console and I am having our site redirected and go daddy, and now I spoke with someone who suggest we do a 301 redirect for all pages on our site and I’m not sure that’s the correct move.
We just changed our domain name after 15 years. when I bought the new domain name I called Go Daddy and they instructed me to contact my google G sweet admin account and change all of our emails over which I did and then I went into Shopify who is my host and changed my primary domain there and then I went back to Go Daddy and had my old website forwarded to my new site. since then there has been nothing but problems with Google. my product feed from my merchant center account has been suspended three or four times now, I tried to rename and move all of my Google accounts from my old domain to my new one, but I am not an SEO person... after making the changes I have started google chats with analytics department with the merchant center with Google as they all keep saying that it looks fine but I’m not convinced because the product feed keeps getting disapproved. So I posted an ad for help and the Guy I spoke with suggested I do a 301 redirect for every single page on my old site, But I’m concerned that might confuse things further? I’ve already started the move in Google Search console And in Shopify I added the old domain back into the domains section and am having it redirectEd that way too... I guess I’m just looking to know which way I should proceed, any and all advice is warmly welcome thank you in advance Maureen
Conversion Rate Optimization | | TooFast130 -
Use "Brand Name" or things like "Free Shipping" in Ecommerce Product Title Tags?
Given the current industry best practices and changes to Google algorithms, should I be using "Product name...Brand Name" or something like "Product Name...Free Shipping (or similar)" in my ecommerce title tags? Thanks!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | jeffbstratton0 -
Which eCommerce site you consider using best practices? Site we can learn from
Hi, I'm looking to hear thoughts and suggestions as per sites that you consider to have great practices in the eCommerce world. Almost none of the sites do everything good so you can split your suggestions by any criteria -
Conversion Rate Optimization | | BeytzNet
the site structure
conversion funnel
Converting product pages (good design)
content creation and blog management / structure
content marketing
SEO guidelines / practices
... Thanks0 -
Root or sub domain for my site? (I forgot which I used to target)
Hi there, I'm sorry for what is most likely a daft question with an easy answer. I have searched the web but whilst there are lots of answers about this generally, nothing seems to answer my specific problem. I have just begun relaunching my site - workingfirstaid.co.uk - but basically cannot remember if I used to try and get links pointing to www.work... or work... I know I have so few links already that it probably doesn't really matter, but I don't want to spend time pointing to the wrong version. My internal links point to the non www version, but searching google for [working first aid] brings up the www version. Thanks in advance for your time! Cord
Conversion Rate Optimization | | cordite0 -
Any providers offering a/b testing using JS callbacks?
Hi all, I am looking to test the impact of buy button wording on conversion rate. The website in question has a few thousand products on non-dynamic URLs. The common a/b testing products on the market restrict tests to a single URL, or you have to enter all the URLs being tested which isn't practical. Ideal Solution What I'd really like to do is: use the provider's web app to configure an experiment with a name and a description of the variations; use some JS code to run the experiment with a callback to carry out the variation. This would allow me to easily put this code on the product details page template. I've written example code below for how this would look. When the experiment is run, the provider's framework would a) tell my code what variation to run, and b) handle the measuring of conversion rate. Questions Are there any providers which work like this? Is there an alternative solution on the market? If there isn't someone already doing this, would it be useful to anyone else? Joel // Loads the provider's framework. // Setting the experiment to run when doc is ready.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | switchplane
// Assumes jQuery environment.0 -
When is it good to use target="_blank"
Hi! Just wondering about user experience and when to use target="_blank" in links on the website. Let's take homepage, for example. Is it better to have social media icons (for Facebook page or Twitter or Google+ page) open in a new window on homepage? When is it appropriate to use target="_blank" and when using it is too much for a user to handle? Am I right to say that target="_blank" should be used when you don't want that link to get on the way of what visitor is doing? What's best for conversion? If you have some resources on the subject - feel free to share them. Thanks! I appreciate all responses!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | MaxMinzer0 -
Difficulty Using GWO?
I've tried several times to use GWO, and I can handle copy-pasting some code etc... yet despite this, it seems that I can't get GWO right. Furthermore, it appears to me that a lot of the things you'd like to test require fancier manipulation of GWO than the standard setup allows for. Do you guys also find GWO to lack user-friendliness? Are other platforms easier to use and get right?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Gab-Goldenberg0 -
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