Best SEO Practices for Top-Level Navigation Structure
-
OK - First of all, thank you to those of you who view and take the time to answer our question.
We are currently in the middle of re-designing our golf packages website, and we're trying to decide the best way to structure our Main Navigation for maximum SEO benefit while keeping user experience in mind.
The top key phrases we are currently targeting:
1) Myrtle Beach Golf 2) Myrtle Beach Golf Packages
You can find the current navigation structure we have come up with here:
http://www.myrtlebeachsitemasters.com/index2.html
So our question is this:
We have subdivisions of: Golf Packages, Accommodations, Golf Courses
Is it in our best interest to:
A) Get rid of the subdivisions and consolidate them to one page?
or
B) Simply "NoFollow" the subdivisions within the Main Navigation?
We are concerned about the subdivisons for 2 reasons:
-
Too many internal links in Main Navigation
-
The "first link only" rule with Google affecting our additional internal links on existing pages.
THANK YOU again to those of you who take the time to answer this question. We really appreciate any clarification on this issue.
-
-
Thanks for the follow up. I do remember reading about page rank sculpting and that change. Good stuff! I appreciate the replies Adam.
-
"If we no-follow the subnavs, will this not bring more juice to the main nav link?"
No, it will not. Google made this change awhile back - last year, I think.
"it only says "Golf Courses", does this not ruin any and ALL links on ANY other page that may say "Myrtle Beach Golf Courses" that point to that page"
OK, I understand now - you were asking regarding other links on the page, not the submenus per se! Hmmm, I do not know if nofollowing the link would fix that or not. Perhaps someone who has done a test in this area will chime in. -
Thank you for the reply. At the moment we have a the MAIN link on the nav for CONDOS, then the subnavs are North Myrtle, Myrtle, and South Myrtle. If we no-follow the subnavs, will this not bring more juice to the main nav link?
Regarding the "First Link Only" rule. Because the main navigation usually does not have the required keywords, such as "Myrtle Beach Golf Courses", instead it only says "Golf Courses", does this not ruin any and ALL links on ANY other page that may say "Myrtle Beach Golf Courses" that point to that page. Which is a more keyword rich target link? Do we even WANT the less keyword targeted link in the main navigation to have any juice? Hence, should they be no-followed, and then use more highly targeted keywords in other places to link to that page?
Hope that makes sense.
-
"Is it in our best interest to: A) Get rid of the subdivisions and consolidate them to one page? or B) Simply "NoFollow" the subdivisions within the Main Navigation?"
From my perspective, probably neither. I see possible user and SEO benefit, for example, to having separate pages for North Myrtle Beach Condos and Myrtle Beach Condos, etc. Nofollowing the links will not flow any more link juice to the other links, so would not be of any help.
If each link is linking to a different page with different anchor text, how does the "first link only" rule apply?
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
-
Regarding SEO Structured Data
1. Should we add organization schema on all pages of the website OR just homepage? 2. What is the best practice for catalog page schema as every website is following a different pattern?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rajesh.Prajapati1 -
Pagination & SEO
Hi We have automatically created brand pages based on which brand they have in their attributes. At the moment, developers have restricted the ability to properly optimise these for SEO, but I also wanted to look at how we should handle pagination. Example: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/brand/manutan?page=1 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/brand/manutan?page=2 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/brand/manutan?page=3 Should we do any of the following - which I've found in an article: Put no follow on all links located on pagination pages Should we no index these pages as they are wasting crawl budget? - Don’t show links to page 2, 3, 4, 5… 10, 11, 12… at the end of your content but only a link to the next and previous pages so that you won’t dilute your page authority. Or does anyone else have any tips on how to handle these pages? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Robots.txt Blocking - Best Practices
Hi All, We have a web provider who's not willing to remove the wildcard line of code blocking all agents from crawling our client's site (user-agent: *, Disallow: /). They have other lines allowing certain bots to crawl the site but we're wondering if they're missing out on organic traffic by having this main blocking line. It's also a pain because we're unable to set up Moz Pro, potentially because of this first line. We've researched and haven't found a ton of best practices regarding blocking all bots, then allowing certain ones. What do you think is a best practice for these files? Thanks! User-agent: * Disallow: / User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: Crawl-delay: 5 User-agent: Yahoo-slurp Disallow: User-agent: bingbot Disallow: User-agent: rogerbot Disallow: User-agent: * Crawl-delay: 5 Disallow: /new_vehicle_detail.asp Disallow: /new_vehicle_compare.asp Disallow: /news_article.asp Disallow: /new_model_detail_print.asp Disallow: /used_bikes/ Disallow: /default.asp?page=xCompareModels Disallow: /fiche_section_detail.asp
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReunionMarketing0 -
Recommended URL Structure
Hello, We are currently adding a new section of content on our site related to Marketing and more specifically 'Digital Marketing' (research reports, trend studies, etc). Over time (several months, or 1-3 years) we will add more 'general' marketing content. My question is which of the following URL structures makes more sense from an SEO perspective (and how best to quantify the benefit of one over another): www.mysite.com/marketing/digital/research/... www.mysite.com/digital-marketing/research/.. Thanks, Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mike-gart0 -
Is this URL Structure SPAMMY
Hey guys/gals I have tried asking this very specific question 3-4 times already and some how my specific question seems to be getting side tracked and my very specif question pertaining to my URL structure keeps getting bypassed and overlooked. I am wondering about if this URL structure would become a possible issue in the somewhat near future with GOOGLE considering what I have seen go down in the SEO world the past 2 years. Does this URL Structure look SPAMMY? http://www.pcmedicsoncall.com/computer-repair/laptop-repair/ www.pcmedicsoncall.com/computer-repair/laptop-repair/laptop-screen-repair/ Below is a Screen shot of the Site which I designed where I have created a SILO Site Architecture. .....PLEASE... Look at the Picture Thank you Marshall SEOMOZ-PC-MEDICS-ON-CALL-1.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarshallThompson310 -
Mobile SEO? Do we need it or not?
Hi Guys, I am about to start to redesigning a new mobile website and am curious if mobile SEO is actually having an affect or not. The site I am doing the redesign for, already has a very well optimized desktop site and has an existing mobile website with no optimization. The mobile website is ranking well in Mobile search so I am curious why I I would need to optimize the new mobile website properly, especially when the mobile website has a canonical tag for its desktop counter part? Love to get everyone's thoughts on this & where they see mobile SEO going in the next 12 months.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seekjobs0 -
SEO Tools
Anyone have any experience and thoughts about the woo rank website and seo tool?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4341 -
SEO Strategy for Microsite
I am working on a project to build a microsite of sorts that will represent a joint program between two large organizations with established web presences and strong domains. Each of the organizations has dedicated sections on their sites speaking to the program, but the leadership has decided the joint program deserves it's own site with dedicated content. The two larger sites perform very well for SEO, and I don't necessarily want to jeopordize thir rankings by delivering content that competes directly with them. So I am doing some keyword research to find some opportunities that will alllow me to use the new site to target keywords not yet being captialized by the larger sites. My grand scheme is to have the three sites targeting the broadest array of keywords possible, thus maximizing exposure and avoiding competition. Here is the rub: the content between the three sites will be different but very similar, and there will be plenty of cross linking, especially from the existing sites to the new site, as we grow the brand of the joint program. I'm curious to here some expert opinions on what the puitfalls of the strategy are and what are some of the things I can do to avoid falling in the black hat category - I recognize that proliferating sites around a single topic and cross linking them is black hat. The organizations simply want to build a brand around a joint program and we are striggling to do that without a dedicated website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AmyLB0