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
-
Best Practice Approaches to Canonicals vs. Indexing in Google Sitemap vs. No Follow Tags
Hi There, I am working on the following website: https://wave.com.au/ I have become aware that there are different pages that are competing for the same keywords. For example, I just started to update a core, category page - Anaesthetics (https://wave.com.au/job-specialties/anaesthetics/) to focus mainly around the keywords ‘Anaesthetist Jobs’. But I have recognized that there are ongoing landing pages that contain pretty similar content: https://wave.com.au/anaesthetists/ https://wave.com.au/asa/ We want to direct organic traffic to our core pages e.g. (https://wave.com.au/job-specialties/anaesthetics/). This then leads me to have to deal with the duplicate pages with either a canonical link (content manageable) or maybe alternatively adding a no-follow tag or updating the robots.txt. Our resident developer also suggested that it might be good to use Google Index in the sitemap to tell Google that these are of less value? What is the best approach? Should I add a canonical link to the landing pages pointing it to the category page? Or alternatively, should I use the Google Index? Or even another approach? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wavelength_International0 -
Search Console - Best practice to fetch pages when you update them?
Hi guys, If you make changes to a page e.g. add more content or something is it good practice to get google to fetch that page again in search console? My assumption is this way, Google can review the updated page quicker, resulting in faster changes in the SERPs for that page. Thoughts? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wozniak650 -
Best Practices for Converting PDFs to HTML
We're working with a client who gets about 80% of their organic, inbound search traffic from links to PDF files on their site. Obviously, this isn't ideal, because someone who just downloads a PDF file directly from a Google query is unlikely to interact with the site in any other way. I'm looking to develop a plan to convert those PDF files to HTML content, and try to get at least some of those visitors to convert into subscribers. What's the best way to go about this? My plan so far is: Develop HTML landing pages for each of the popular PDFs, with the content from the PDF, as well as the option to download the PDF with an email signup. Gradually implement 301 redirects for the existing PDFs, and see what that does to our inbound SEO traffic. I don't want to create a dip in traffic, although our current "direct to inbound" traffic is largely useless. Are their things I should watch out for? Will I get penalized by Google for redirecting a PDF to HTML content? Other things I should be aware of?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | atourgates0 -
SEO question
Hi there! I'm the SEO manager for 5 Star Loans. I have 2 city pages running. We are running our business in 2 locations: Berkeley, CA & San Jose, CA. For those offices we've created 2 google listings with separate gmail accounts. Berkeley (http://5starloans.com/berkeley/) ranks well in Berkeley in Gmaps and it shows on first page in organic results. However the second city page San Jose (http://5starloans.com/san-jose/) doesn't show in the Gmaps local pack results and also doesn't rank well in organic results. Both of them have authentic backlinks and reviews. It has been a year already and it's high time we knew the problem 🙂 any comment would be helpful. thanks a lot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moonalev0 -
Seo flash site
Hey. Would hear whether it is possible to SEO a website which is flash site cms?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Agger0 -
Launching a new site with old, new and updated content: What’s best practice?
Hi all, We are launching a new site soon and I’d like your opinion on best practice related to its content. We will be retaining some pages and content (although the URLs might change a bit as I intend to replace under-scores with hyphens and remove .asp from some extensions in order to standardise a currently uneven URL structuring). I will also be adding a lot of new pages with new content, along with amend some pages and their content (and amend URLs again if need be), and a few pages are going to be done away with all together. Any advice from those who’ve done the same in the past as to how best to proceed? Does the URL rewriting sound OK to do in conjunction with adding and amending content? Cheers, Dave
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Martin_S0 -
Mobile SEO vs. normal SEO?
Hi everyone, I wanted to ask you abour your opinon on mobile SEO. Do we already have two different Indices, one for mobile, one for desktop? Except a few mobile listings I don't see a difference yet. If yes, do I need to do special mobile SEO for my site or is it enough to have e.g. a responsive webdesign which detects the device and shows a different page? Are there any other extra Mobile SEO measures that should be considered? I know of the Mobile Sitemap and directories but is there anything else? Best regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CrazySEO0 -
There's a website I'm working with that has a .php extension. All the pages do. What's the best practice to remove the .php extension across all pages?
Client wishes to drop the .php extension on all their pages (they've got around 2k pages). I assured them that wasn't necessary. However, in the event that I do end up doing this what's the best practices way (and easiest way) to do this? This is also a WordPress site. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digisavvy0