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.
External vs inline for CSS menu
-
Which is better for search engines: external or inline menus? And which language: CSS, Javascript, or both?
-
Thanks, Steve. That makes sense.
-
Even though inline uses less code than usual, I'd still say always go for an external file so there is less code to crawl though for your content. The cleaner the code, the better. Inline is still more code than just a linked external stylesheet.
*Edit: Oh and CSS every time over JavaScript
-
Thanks for the quick reply. I guess I should have specified an external CSS file that contains the menu coding, vs. inline CSS coding. From an SEO/crawl bot perspective, should the CSS menu coding be in an external file or inline?
-
What exactly is an 'external' or 'internal' menu? Every menu that is on your website is internal by definition that it is 'on your website'?
Menus should be fully accessible with Javascript turned off. With that in mind you could add Javascript to make the menu function better for users that have Javascript enabled.
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
-
Hreflang Errors 404 vs "Page Not Found"
For a websites that differ between catalogs (PDPs) what hreflang error causes the least harm? Obviously the best solution is to only have hreflang for shared products, but this takes more work to implement. So when no identical product exists... 1. Hreflang points to 404 or 410 error. 2. Hreflang points to 200 status "Page Not Found" page. This obviously has the additional issue of needing to point back to 100+ urls. I want to avoid having Google decide to ignore all hreflang due to errors as many correct urls will exist. Any thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | rigelcable0 -
301 Redirect to external site
Hi guys, We have a client who is getting their website redesigned through us. They are discontinuing couple of their services which will not get featured in the new site. They are fairly well ranked for these services and my client wishes to 301 redirect these pages to an external site owned by his friend so that they benefit out of the ranking. The question is: Will my client's website's general ranking get affected due to 301 redirecting to an external site? The external site is not spammy or red-flagged by Google (at the moment, at least). Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | RameshNair
Ramesh Nair0 -
Duplicate anchor text vs poor relevance in internal links
We're writing a number of blog posts, all based around a particular head-term (call it "women's widgets"). Each post will be centered around a different long-tail keyword (e.g. "women's brandA widgets", "women's brandB widgets", "women's type1 widgets", etc.). We want to link from the blog posts back to the main "women's widgets" category-level page on our site. Should we: a) Use the words "women's widgets" in each blog post and link that to the "women's widgets" page? This would be the most relevant, but it also seems like using the same anchor text on all of the posts, and linking to the main page, is not good since Google doesn't like seeing the same exact anchor text all the time, right? b) Link the long-tail keyword ("women's brandA widgets") to the main "women's widgets" page? That would solve the anchor text duplication issue, but then the anchor text doesn't seem relevant to the page being linked to (it might never mention "brandA" on that main page at all), and I think it would also hurt the blog post's chances of ranking for the long-tail keyword since we're basically saying that there's a more relevant page for that keyword somewhere else (i.e. you shouldn't link out from a page using the phrase you're trying to optimize that page for). c) Link a nearby word/phrase instead? For example, we could say "Trust Companyname.com for your women's widget needs", and link "Companyname.com" to the "women's widget" page. By proximity to the keyword phrase, that may help a bit, but again the relevancy of the anchor text to the page being linked to is fairly low. I'd hate to have a bunch of "click here", "read this" or "company name" anchor texts being used, just in the name of not overusing the head-term in the anchor text. Are we just missing something, or misunderstanding Google's preferences? What do you do when you don't want to overuse a keyword in anchor text, but you still want to link to a main category-level page using the head-term in order to tell Google that that is the most relevant, best page for that keyword? Is anchor text duplication more of a problem for external backlinks, and less of an issue for internal interlinking? Do you have a different suggestion, other than what I outlined above? Thanks for the help!
On-Page Optimization | | BandLeader
John0 -
Is a Mega Menu with over 300 links in it hurting my rankings?
I got hit pretty badly by Panda 4.0 (1/3 of my traffic lost), and I'm fairly certain it was because Google had potentially indexed over 20 million pages from a site filtering piece of software and got done for duplicate content. I have since fixed that using URL Parameters and that 20 million is down to 2.7 million now and I have submitted a clean site map, so now I wait. I have just done a site relaunch and am trying to determine if there are any other issues. I run an online store, and I have a mega menu with well over 300 links in it - makes the user experience really quick and easy to jump exactly where you want - and then I have about 30 links in the footer. I know there's a 'no more than 100 links on a page' guideline for Moz, but does anyone know if Google is smart enough to see the same header / footer navigation structure on every page of a site and know it's navigation and not water down the rest of the links, or do I need to re-think and simplify my navigation? It's one of those things that's there for a user experience and now I'm worried that I'm being penalised. The site is www dot shopnaturally dot com dot au
On-Page Optimization | | sparrowdog0 -
Does css float affect SEO?
It is generally believed that the closer the content is to the top of the page, the better it is for SEO. If that's incorrect, please let me know. I have a 2 column site where the left menu is navigation and right side is content. Obviously, the left menu appears in the code before the content does, but I can flip them around via css float. If I do that, the content will appear on the left visually, even though in the code it still comes after the left side navigation. Do either positions affect seo?
On-Page Optimization | | cmp1010 -
Combining CSS
One recommendation from a page speed analysis of my site was to combine CSS (external style sheets) but after reading more on the topic others say that this is not always best. Any thoughts on either approach?
On-Page Optimization | | casper4340