I want to move some pages of my website to a folder and nav menu in those pages should only show inner page links, will it hurt SEO?
-
Hi,
My website has a few SaaS products, to make my website simple i want to move my website some pages to its specific folder structure , so eg
website.com/product1/features
website.com/product1/pricing
website.com/product1/informationand same for product2 and so on,
the website.com/product1/.. menu will only show the links of product1 and only one link to homepage (possibly in footer).
Please share your opinion will it be a good idea, from UI perspective it will be simple , but i am not sure about SEO perspective, please help
thanks
-
Moving some pages of your website to a folder and modifying the navigation menu to show only inner page links can impact your website's SEO, but if done correctly, it doesn't necessarily have to hurt it.
But we don't have to think from SEO prospective only, we have to look the User experience angle too.
From a user experience point of view, moving some pages of your website to a folder and having a navigation menu that only shows inner page links can have both positive and negative impacts. Here's a breakdown of how it might affect user experience and SEO:
Positive Aspects:
-
Improved Organization: Structuring your website with folders can make it more organized and user-friendly, especially if you have a lot of content. Users can easily find what they're looking for within the folder.
-
Reduced Clutter: By only showing inner page links in the navigation menu for that specific folder, you reduce clutter and distraction for users. They are presented with relevant choices, making it easier to navigate.
-
Focused Content: This approach can help users stay focused on the content within that folder, as they won't be distracted by links to unrelated pages.
Negative Aspects:
-
Loss of Visibility: If you hide the outer pages in the navigation menu, users may have a harder time finding those pages, which could negatively impact their experience.
-
SEO Concerns: Search engines like Google may not be able to crawl and index the inner pages as effectively if they are not linked from the main navigation. This could lead to decreased visibility in search results for those inner pages.
-
User Confusion: Users may wonder why certain pages are not visible in the main navigation, and they might find it confusing or frustrating if they expect to see certain links there.
[you can Read the detail article here "How to improve user experience by moving pages to folders without harming SEO"]
Ultimately, the decision should be made with a balance in mind. Consider user experience and SEO best practices. You can organize your content in folders for better navigation while also incorporating alternative ways to guide users to important pages and ensuring that search engines can find and index your content effectively.
Warm Regards
Rahul Gupta
Suvidit Academy -
-
No, moving pages of your website to a folder and having the navigation menu show only inner page links will not necessarily hurt SEO. However, it's essential to implement proper 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new ones to ensure that search engines can still find and index your content. Additionally, make sure your new navigation structure is logical and user-friendly to provide a good experience for both visitors and search engines. (Study abroad) (2 Year Post Graduate Diploma Canada) (PMP Exam Prep) (Canada PR)
-
Moving pages of your website to a folder and adjusting the navigation menu to show only inner page links should not necessarily hurt your website's SEO if done correctly. However, it's essential to follow best practices to ensure that search engines can still crawl and index your content effectively. Here are some steps to consider:
- 301 Redirects: If you are changing the URLs of the pages, set up 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new ones. This tells search engines that the content has moved permanently and helps preserve SEO equity.
- Update Internal Links: Make sure that internal links within your website (from other pages, blog posts, etc.) are updated to point to the new URLs.
- XML Sitemap: Update your XML sitemap to include the new URLs. This helps search engines discover and index the new pages more efficiently.
- Robots.txt: Ensure that your robots.txt file does not block search engine crawlers from accessing the new folder and its contents.
- Canonical Tags: Use canonical tags if you have duplicate content issues, indicating the preferred URL for indexing.
- Submit to Search Engines: Resubmit your updated sitemap to search engines (Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, etc.) to expedite the indexing process.
- Test and Monitor: After making these changes, monitor your website's performance in search results and check for any issues using tools like Google Search Console. Address any errors or problems promptly.
By taking these steps, you can minimize the impact on SEO and ensure that search engines can still access and index your content effectively.
I focus on these main points when I want to move some pages of my website to a folder and nav menu in those pages should only show inner page links for my Site Pet Nutrition Guru.
It is also help ful when I move the blog (Can Cats Eat Mochi?).
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
-
words not appearing in the search engine or not ranking correctly ?
Although we do all the SEO work on our website, we do not rank in the words computer repair and laptop repair, although our backlink rate is good. The address of our website is https://trueonefix.com, one of the keywords I gave to the homepage that I was really curious about, for example, computer repair, I created a page on this page ( https://trueonefix.com/computer-repair/ ), they told me it was cannibalization and I removed it, now the site is getting less rankings than before. Can anyone help as to why this is? No matter what I do, I can't rank the words. #trueonefix #googlerank
SEO Tactics | | Trueonefix0 -
Looking for an SEO consultant: The Moz Community Is The Only Place I Trust
Moz Community, The most talented people that are SEO experts are part of this community, so that is why I came here to find assistance. I am a Partner at https://3forty3.com/, we are an executive search firm based in San Francisco. At 3FORTY3, we work with the top VC firms in Silicon Valley serving venture-backed and growth-stage clients. We placed marketing executives at 8 of the top 25 Forbes Cloud 100 companies. We are looking for an SEO consultant to help us with our website. Our phase 1 budget = $5K - $10K, but that would grow after phase 1. If interested, please email me directly at jon@3forty3.com. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eTownKid
Jon Schepke
Partner, 3FORTY3 Executive Search
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonschepke/0 -
Ranking going south
Hi - I have a site Simply Stairlifts and I don't understand it but I've followed all the SEO processes of cleaning the site and building links, but ranking just keeps falling - any advise would be very gratefully received 👍 .
SEO Tactics | | Naju2310 -
Extra Budget Money, What's Best SEO Spend for 7K?
My boss, alerted me that we have 7k in unspent budget for 2022. If you had extra 7k to spend on SEO tool/software/training or whatever, what would you purchase?
Other SEO Tools | | inhouseninja0 -
How to rank a website in different countries
I have a website which I want to rank in UK, NZ and AU and I want to keep my domain as .com in all the countries. I have specified the lang=en now what needs to be done to rank one website in 3 different English countries without changing the domain extension i.e. .com.au or .com.nz
SEO Tactics | | Ravi_Rana0 -
How to best handle search landing pages - that don't exist
I have quite a bit of blog information that can be searched, which results in "pages" that don't actually live anywhere. These are scanned by Moz and appear as poor page quality for speed, etc. How do I get the service to either ignore all of these or is there a way to treat them as a real page with content? As there are quite a few generated over time, I'd like to be able to capture them somehow. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | amac70 -
Yoast SEO. After set up 404 error pages
Hello all, Something strange happened with my blog site. I recently signed to MOZ tools. Initially everything was fine, but during my last crawl I got loads of 404
Technical SEO | | A_Fotografy
pages. Few days ago I was tweaking some settings in SEO plugin according to this post https://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success What I noticed was that 404 pages were coming from my blog posts, but for
some reason category was missing in those posts. For example this link is 404
https://a-fotografy.co.uk/inchcolm-island-wedding-photography-bailie The one with category is https://a-fotografy.co.uk/wedding-pictures/inchcolm-island-wedding-photography-bailie/ So basically for some reason category was missing. Please let me know how can I fix this instead of doing hundreds of
redirects now. Thank you,
Regards,
Armands0 -
New Page Showing Up On My Reports w/o Page Title, Words, etc - However, I didn't create it
I have a WordPress site and I was doing a crawl for errors and it is now showing up as of today that this page : https://thinkbiglearnsmart.com/event-registration/?event_id=551&name_of_event=HTML5 CSS3 is new and has no page title, words, etc. I am not even sure where this page or URL came from. I was messing with the robots.txt file to allow some /category/ posts that were being hidden, but I didn't re-allow anything with the above appendages. I just want to make sure that I didn't screw something up that is now going to impact my rankings - this was just a really odd message to come up as I didn't create this page recently - and that shouldnt even be a page accessible to the public. When I edit the page - it is using an Event Espresso (WordPress plugin) shortcode - and I don't want to noindex this page as it is all of my events. Sorry this post is confusing, any help or insight would be appreciated! I am also interested in hiring someone for some hourly consulting work on SEO type issues if anyone has any references. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | webbmason0