Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis
      Moz Pro

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Click To Reveal vs Rollover Navigation Better For Organic?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Click To Reveal vs Rollover Navigation Better For Organic?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    2
    2
    959
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • 94501
      94501 last edited by

      Hi,

      Any thoughts, data or insights as which is better in a top navigation... click to reveal the nav links or rollover to reveal the nav links? Regular content in an accordion (click to reveal) is evidently not best practice. Does that apply to navigation as well?

      Thanks! Best... Mike

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • AndyMozster
        AndyMozster last edited by

        Interesting UX question. Short answer; click menu is best, but its not black and white.

        Naturally its more subtle than that. You mention regular content. Regular content being hidden by any mechanism is naturally not too user friendly. Accordions can often be overlooked, text hidden in the hover state of images is a client favourite that is also terrible UX practice. The mechanism doesn't matter too much - its the fact content is hidden by an un-signposted mechanism. The author knows its there, but your visitor will not.

        Menu isn't content though; its a different beast. A menu needs to exhibit good information hierarchy. We try to keep our main menu to 7 items or less, essentially for clarity of the first tier of offerings. This can often necessitate sub-menus. Sub-menus are hidden content, we're just arguing the toss about mechanism. So first off we'd suggest a nice little signpost like a downward arrow to show which main items have sub-menus

        Also note we don't have hover states on touch devices, so unless you're planning on a second type of menu for that, your choice is made for you and it'll certainly need to be selection rather than hover based.

        Select to get something is more in keeping with how everything else on the web works; text links, buttons etc. Hover feels more immediate but if your site demographic is broad, bear in mind that the dexterity required will elude a percentage of your audience. Consider the accessibility implications of this and your site client needs.

        For example, hover menus can be a real pain when the sub-menu content is wider than the trigger area. This will have happened to all of you; hover over the main menu item, see the sub-menu item you want, move the mouse to select the sub menu item... o dear the sub menu has disappeared on you. You left the hover area before reaching the sub menu and the hover state is lost. As well as accidental deactivation its quite possible to get annoying accidental activation with hover too.

        As well as audience consider the sub-menu itself. If you have a couple of small items consider hover, a massive mega-menu will nearly always be better toggled by selection. On that note, if you're using mega-menus consider Nielsens excellent guide here: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/mega-menus-work-well/ 

        PS: I'd encourage everyone to start thinking about selection rather than 'clicks'. I still slip up myself, but clicks are an outmoded, desktop-centric term that is very dangerous to bandy about when making responsive websites. Much as your anchor text should never be "Click here" we should always be thinking about "selection". Selection speaks to intent and action rather than physical methodology, as that methodology can be clicking, yes, but also tapping, voice command, keyboard based, etc.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • 1 / 1
        • First post
          Last post

        Got a burning SEO question?

        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


        Start my free trial


        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.

        • See all categories

        Related Questions

        • Kingalan1

          Organic Traffic Drop of 90% After Domain Migration

          We moved our domain is http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com on April 4th. It was migrated to https://www.metro-manhattan.com Google Search Console continues to show  about 420of URLs indexed for the old "NYC" domain. This number has not dropped on Search Console. Don't understand why Google has not de-indexed the old site. 
          For the new "Metro" domain only 114 pages are being shown as valid. Our search volume has dropped from about 85 visits a day to 12 per day. 390 URLs appear as "crawled- currently not indexed". Please note that the migrated content is identical. Nothing at all changed. All re-directs were implemented properly. Also, at the time of the migration we filed a disavow for about 200 spammy links. This disavow file was entered for the old domain and the new one as well. Any ideas as to how to trouble shoot this would be much appreciated!!! This has not been very good for business.

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
          0
        • BeckyKey

          Onsite SEO vs Offsite SEO

          Hey I know the importance of both onsite & offsite, primarily with regard to outreach/content/social. One thing I am trying to determine at the moment, is how much do I invest in offsite. My current focus is to improve our onpage content on product pages, which is taking some time as we have a small team. But I also know our backlinks need to improve. I'm just struggling on where to spend my time. Finish the onsite stuff by section first, or try to do a bit of both onsite/offsite at the same time?

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey
          1
        • shannmg1

          Mega Menu Navigation Best Practice

          First off, I'm a landscape/nature/travel photographer. I mainly sell prints of my work. I'm in the process of redesigning my website, and I'm trying to decide whether to keep the navigation extremely simple or leave the drop-down menu for galleries. Currently, my navigation is something like this: Galleries
           > Gallery for State or Country (example: California)
            > Sub-region in State or Country (example: San Francisco)
          Blog
          Prints
          About
          Contact Selling prints is the top priority of the website, as that's what runs the business. I have lots of blog content, and I'm starting to build some good travel advice, etc. but in reality, the galleries, which then filter down to individual pages for each photo with a cart system, are the most important. What I'm struggling to decide is whether to leave the sort of "mega menu" for the galleries, or to do away with them, and have the user go to the overall galleries page to navigate further into the site. Leaving the mega menu intact, the galleries page becomes a lot less important, and takes out a step to get to the shopping cart. However, I'm wondering if the amount of galleries in the drop down menu is giving TOO many choices up front as well. I also wonder how changing this will affect search. Any thoughts on which is better or is it really just a matter of preference?

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shannmg1
          0
        • john_marketade

          Adding hreflang tags - better on each page, or the site map?

          Hello, I am wondering if there seems to be a preference for adding hreflang tags (from this article).  My client just changed their site from gTLDs to ccTLDs, and a few sites have taken a pretty big traffic hit.  One issue is definitely the amount of redirects to the page, but I am also going to work with the developer to add hreflang tags.  My question is - is it better to add them to the header of each page, or the site map, or both, or something else?  Any other thoughts are appreciated.  Our Australia site, which was at least findable using Australia Google before this relaunch, is not showing up, even when you search the company name directly. Thanks!Lauryn

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | john_marketade
          0
        • Ask4443523

          H2 vs. H3 Tags for Category Navigation

          Hey, all. I have client that uses tags in the navigation for its blog.  For example, tags might appear around "Library," "Recent Posts," etc.  This is handled through their WordPress theme. This seems fairly standard, but I wonder whether tags are semantically appropriate.  Since each blog post is fairly lengthy (about 500-1000 words) with multiple tags, would it be more appropriate to use tags for this menu navigation?  Are we cutting into the effectiveness of our tags by using them for menu navigation? The navigation is certainly an important page element, and it structures content, so it seems that it should use some header tag.  Anyways, your thoughts are greatly appreciated.  I'm a content creator, not an SEO, so this is a bit out of my skillset.

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ask4443523
          0
        • jpfleiderer

          508 compliance vs good SEO re: Image alt tags

          I'm currently in debate with our 508 compliance team over the use of alt tags on images. For SEO, it is best practice to use alt tags so that readers can tell what the image represents. However, they are arguing that these images should NOT have alt text as it doesn't add anything to the disability screen reader as the image text would be repetitive with the text on the page. I feel they are taking the "decorative" image concept in 508 compliance too far. It's intention is for images for bullets, etc that truly are decorative in nature and add no benefit to the reader. What is the communities thoughts on this? Have you ever run into scenario where 508 is attempting to ruin SEO? Usually the 2 play nicely.

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jpfleiderer
          0
        • mj775

          Canonical VS Rel=Next & Rel=Prev for Paginated Pages

          I run an ecommerce site that paginates product pages within Categories/Sub-Categories. Currently, products are not displayed in multiple categories but this will most likely happen as time goes on (in Clearance and Manufacturer Categories). I am unclear as to the proper implementation of Canonical tags and Rel=Next & Rel=Prev tags on paginated pages. I do not have a View All page to use as the Canonical URL so that is not an option. I want to avoid duplicate content issues down the road when products are displayed in multiple categories of the site and have Search Engines index paginated pages. My question is, should I use the Rel=Next & Rel=Prev tags on paginated pages as well as using Page One as the Canonical URL? Also, should I implement the Canonical tag on pages that are not yet paginated (only one page)?

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mj775
          0
        • nicole.healthline

          Wordtracker vs Google Keyword Tool

          When I find keyword opportunities in Wordtracker, I'll sometimes run them through Adwords Keyword tool only to find that Google says these keywords have 0 search volume. Would you use these keywords even though Google says users aren't searching for them?

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline
          0

        Get started with Moz Pro!

        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

        Start my free trial
        Products
        • Moz Pro
        • Moz Local
        • Moz API
        • Moz Data
        • STAT
        • Product Updates
        Moz Solutions
        • SMB Solutions
        • Agency Solutions
        • Enterprise Solutions
        • Digital Marketers
        Free SEO Tools
        • Domain Authority Checker
        • Link Explorer
        • Keyword Explorer
        • Competitive Research
        • Brand Authority Checker
        • Local Citation Checker
        • MozBar Extension
        • MozCast
        Resources
        • Blog
        • SEO Learning Center
        • Help Hub
        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
        • How-to Guides
        • Moz Academy
        • API Docs
        About Moz
        • About
        • Team
        • Careers
        • Contact
        Why Moz
        • Case Studies
        • Testimonials
        Get Involved
        • Become an Affiliate
        • MozCon
        • Webinars
        • Practical Marketer Series
        • MozPod
        Connect with us

        Contact the Help team

        Join our newsletter
        Moz logo
        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
        • Accessibility
        • Terms of Use
        • Privacy

        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.