Menu Structure
-
I'm working on a site where there is a top level menu with a dropdown off a couple of the main headings and subsequent dropdown from one or two of those dropdowns. Usual stuff.
The main problem we are having is the ranking of one of the main menu pages, some of which is historical stuff we have cleaned up and waiting for Penguin.
My question is whether the following is a prudent step. The main menu option/page and keyword is something like "Green Widgets" but this activates a dropdown where there is a link to 'Types of Green Widget', then again there is a dropdown with several pages to different types of Green widget. The two menu items "Green Widgets" and "Types of Green Widgets" both link to the "Green Widget" page.
As the "Types of Green Widgets" link is sitewide and not really in the right flavour for the "Green Widget" page would it be prudent to remove the link element of that menu item or set it to /#
-
You could always test the link to see if it is really being used from the secondary navigation more so (or at all) than the main navigation link. Create a parameter and track it over a few months in analytics. That way you don't over-optimize in the interim but 3 months from now (or less, or more, really that's up to you) you can definitively say whether it is better to remove it or if leaving it alone was the correct move.
-
yep, without giving the site it's difficult to exactly describe. No it's not breadcrumbs, or on-page links. It's a secondary menu option to the same page they have historically had problems with. That I understand as there are valid ways to lead to the same page and arguably show importance to that page. But in this case it seems to be a secondary menu link to the same page just for the sake of another sitewide menu link that isn't really helpful to the visitor. But I might have a little "anti-over-optimising fever"!
-
I can't really visualize that well how the links are laid out from your description. Its been a long day, so that might be it.
So it really depends on how it links back to those pages. e.g. If they're site navigation breadcrumbs then I don't see the problem as it potentially establishes relevancy for the topic and facilitates movement through the site for both users and bots. If its just an internal link for the sake of a link in the body of the page, maybe not so much. But if its a completely relevant link and you see in analytics that people who enter on the one page are regularly going to the other, and vice versa, then obviously it is of use to the customer/visitor. If its an issue of pages being link heavy and you're worried that its diluting link equity or creating a user experience issue and you want to clean up the page and/or make it easier/more intuitive to use, then a heat map tool like Crazy Egg might be useful for helping you determine which links to keep and which are flak.
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
-
Question on site structure
My client is a nationwide company. They provide building maintenance services in 7 different cities. In each city they provide a different range of services. They currently have a single service page for each service and no mention on that page of the cities they offer the service. The service pages are getting no SERP visibility. We are running Paid Search and recommending SEO. I'm wondering whether it would be beneficial to build out specific service pages for each city so the content is more relevant to both users and search engines. What is best practice in this situation? Client wants to dominate SERPs in each market for the services they offer.
On-Page Optimization | | SEOinSunnyNelson0 -
FAQ page structure
I have read in other discussions that having all questions on an FAQ page is the way to go and then if the question has an answer worthy of its own page, you should abbreviate the answer and link to the page with more content. My question is when using some templates in WP, they have a little + button you can click and it reveal the answer to the question. Does this hurt SEO versus having all text visible and then using headers/subheaders? An example of the + button https://fyrfyret.dk/faq/
On-Page Optimization | | OrlandSEO1 -
Do I need to worry about these 404s after changing permalinks structure?
Not long ago I wanted to change the permalink structure on a blog where the full date was included in the post urls to one where it was just /category/blog-post-title. The site is on a managed host and they setup the redirects for me and then I changed the permalink structure in the WP settings. Everything worked fine after and all old posts now redirect to the new structure. However in Google search console I can see that my 404s report has jumped from a few hundred to several thousands but it seems to be counting the urls paths to elements such as images within the old posts permalink structure eg /2012/6/some-post/some-image-in-post all the old posts themselves and their content redirects fine though. Do I need to worry about these 404s? It annoys me to see so many in my reports like that even if they aren't hurting my site 😞
On-Page Optimization | | linklander0 -
Page/Website Structure
Hello again Mozzers, We have a category, lets call it widgets. Within widgets are about a hundred or so products. For usability my predecessor made the following layout Widgets Main Cateogry - Links off homepage - (no content just links to the 3 sub-categories)
On-Page Optimization | | ATP
- Widgets by Resolution
---- About 20 subcategories
eg. 0.1 Resolution widgets
0.2 resolution widgets
- Widgets by Capacity
---- About 20 subcategories
eg. 1 capacity widgets
2 capacity widgets
- Widgets by Type
---- About 12 subcategories This was a major improvement from a userbility perspective as it made a very complex product range navigatable by the major features or basic type. However, as you can imaging we now have 60+ very similiar pages all displaying very similiar products a nightmare for SEO. It also isnt ideal for user navigation as it take too many clicks to get to the products. I propose the following fix, and i wanted your opinion. Widget Main Category - Link from homepage (Consolidated with Widgets by Type)
-300 Words of content
-Links to the 12 Sub-type Catoregies (These are pages i can fill with content + products. This would give me a more ordinary structure of which I can focus each page to a keyword) The tricky part comes with incorporating the capacity and resolution options. 1 Browse Capacity Page
(20 sub categories all the same except capacity quantity & products)
1 Browse by Resolution Page
(20 sub categories all the same except resolution value & products) The owner want them, I was going to link from the main widgets page to each of these to give the customer the option. What I can't decide is how to deal with them from an SEO point of view. Should they be no-followed? canonicaled? Can there be any advantage to having so many pages covering slightly different variations or as i suspect it is dangerous to the overall health of the site. To complicate things further, Canonical tags may not be an option due to an old magento version running that doesnt support them. Is there an alternative way around? As always many thanks.0 -
Which URL Structure is best for New Website?
Hello All, I have one client and he want to develop his website but the he want the URL structure for his website page like below: http://www.example.com/category/xxproduct.html But I have suggest him below URL Structure http://www.example.com/category/xx-product.html So Can you people please suggest me that from above which URL structure is better from SEO side as well as from Visual side..? Is using - is better to separate the words in URL?
On-Page Optimization | | jemindesai0 -
Where to Put Content For Product Pages - How To Structure Website?
Currently we have 300+ products. We do not have a CMS or Ecommerce site at the time being for certain reasons. Currently our site is set up with content on almost every single page. The main catagory page, explains everything on the main page, then our products page has a lot of text too. But right now, it seems as if our main pages are only ranking. In the near future I will be using a cms and purchasing a template. I noticed most Ecommerce style websites have just the product with the name and price, then when they click on the product it brings you to that page with a brief product description and some photos. My question is, does each page need content? Or can just the product page itself have content? For example, say we have a link to SHOES. Then the shoes page displays dress, casual and athletic. Then the athletic page brings you to a page with, running, tennis, cross training shoes, and so forth. Is it best to write content on this main catagory page? If so, how much? Or should we focus on putting content on the actual page of the individual product? Along with pictures and specifications? I know Content is Key and we are doing pretty well at that, however, I am starting to wondering if we have to much content or too similar content. What is the best structure to try and recieve GREAT organic rankings?
On-Page Optimization | | hfranz0 -
URL structure for a new WordPress site
Hi I'm building a new next big thing website from scratch (for a translation agency) and I encountered an issue with the URL structure. I need to chose the URL for important targeted keyword pages and I have a conflict between two tools I'm using. Please read below the situation: domain: mashtranslation.com target keyword: french translation services which URL you think is better from a SEO point of view (and possibly for users): mashtranslation.com/services/french/ OR mashtranslation.com/french-translation-services/ I'm asking this because one WordPress plugin (Wordpress SEO by Yoast) says the URL structure is not optimised while another tool (Market Samurai) says the URL is optimised.
On-Page Optimization | | flo20 -
Page title structure?
From an SEO and user perspective what structure do you recommend for page titles. For example (given that they shouldn't ideally be more than 70 characters) :- Keywords (maybe two or three) | Company Name | more keywords I understood the best place for the company name was about second place. Is this now the considered view taking into consideration 'branding' which has been flagged up as the way forward. Keywords are separated by the vertical bar | - any thoughts? For 'house keeping' pages such as Privacy Policy - should this be optmised or simply stated as 'privacy policy' Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | PH2920