Considering site navigation options
-
I am working on a site redesign and re evaluating concepts I haven't thought about for a few years.
I generally see site navigation that is either "top-down" or "left bar".
Top down navigation normally uses the left nav. for search refinements.
The benefit of top nav. is that it clears up the center of the page for non navigation content.
The drawback is that you can't fit as many categories in a top nav.
Left side nav. can hold a long list of categories, but subcategories are often in the center of the page.
In the past, I have preferred to use left nav. with a multi level scroll over search refinement. I believe this allowed users to get to their destination page with fewer clicks. (I have always believed that every required additional click causes lost customers). I also believe that this has caused me to get more juice flowing to deeper pages on sites and better long-tail conversion. This means I have had pages with a LOT of links.
With this method, I have tightly controlled my categories. What on other sites are often dynamic search refinements, are on my sites additional categories.
I am considering making a site with a top down navigation system. I like the additional screen space in the center I get to work with. Is my assumption about pages created by search refinement wrong? Is it ok for SEO to have a left nav that has a bunch of search refinements that are dynamically created?
-
I'm personally really picky where I would allow my link juice to go from my strongest page (Home Page). I would make sure to pass my link juice to the most important pages, and not waste it on any page that won't benefit the search engines or user right away.
When practiced, this would look like a menu bar with no drop downs, only links pointing to my important pages within content and only important links in the footer. This not only funnels your visitors the way you want, but it also spreads the link juice the way you want.
Another reason to do what I had described is usability. Although people manage to function well on most sites, it has been shown that fewer options leads to better results. You don't want your visitors to have to debate on what's the best way to go, you just want them to click forward.
Anyway, here is my favorite navigation example: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/
I like how the refinement is under the menu, but this is just my own personal preference with no data/examples or anything backing it up.
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
-
Changing top level navigation between site sections
We've got an internal proposal to change our top level nav depending on the section of the site. For example, on our homepage it might read: Products, Library, About with relevant links dropping down below. As we have varied products, the drop down underneath it would include the various families. When arriving on the product family page the top-level nav would change to represent more specific offerings. For example: xxx.com 1. Products; 2. Library; 3. About xxx.com/xxx 1. Product family 1; 2. Product family 2; 3. Product family 3; 4. Library; 5. About What are the SEO/UX implications of this? It seems confusing but allows more specific navigation via the main nav depending on the section of the site. Also it seems that an alternating TLN might not be too Google-friendly.
Web Design | | gwelch0 -
ECWID Ecommerce Sites. No Custom URLS?
Is there any way possible to be able to name product urls in website that use ECWID for their ecommerce? They have long and "dirty" urls. For example this running boards site: http://www.runningboards4less.com/general-motors#!/~/product/category=6593890&id=28043027 Isn't this hurting the overall SEO of the site? Especially product pages?
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
Average Time to Conversion on Site
I am curious to know if there is a way to view or calculate the average time it takes site visitors to convert per session. For example, based on a current website design, the average time on site might be 3 minutes and the number of conversions might be 100. is there a way to say that for the current website design, it takes 3 minutes for the average site visitor to submit a web form? Then, as I redesign the site, my goal would be to improve the average time to conversion by making the web form more accessible and require less information within the form itself. I don't think this is currently possible in GA. Has anyone figured out a way to accomplish this by use of traditional tracking tools? Or, am I facing having to code my site to record each visitor's time on site from the second they enter and then stop the clock when they submit the form?
Web Design | | dsinger0 -
Our "home page" is behind a member wall, options?
So www.pch.com(portal) redirects to www.pch.com/unrecognized(landing page) if you are not registered with us and logged in. This means that the search engines are not logged in, so they see only our landing page. It used to be that there was no portal/home, on pch.com, that was just the landing page, but that changed about 6 months ago. We do rank for our brand terms, but my company would like to rank for terms like "sweepstakes." They DO understand why we don't, thankfully. They don't think SEO is magic voodoo. They get it. But they asked for options, as I have said that the portal on www.pch.com really is a good page to optimize for non-brand, core terms like sweepstakes....but only if the search engines can see it. I gave them these options, and they asked me to seek out more. So any thoughts would be good: 1. Best case scenario would be to abandon the landing page, just have the keyword rich portal page be the actual home page with no re-direct. (this won't happen, but I decided it needed to be first on my list). 2. Turn the portal into the home page (remove the redirect), but have the landing page overlay in a light box. This should, if I am not mistaken, be a best of both worlds situation, where the light box landing page would still have all of the value of the actual keyword rich portal page behind it. 3. If the landing page has to remain as it does now with the non-logged in redirect to it, change the URLs so that the landing page is www.pch.com and the portal becomes www.pch.com/members/ or something like that. Any other thoughts? Thanks! Kenn Gold Publishers Clearing House
Web Design | | Kenn_Gold0 -
Using content from other sites without duplicate content penalties?
Hi there, I am setting up a website, where i believe it would substantially benefit users experience if i setup a database of information on artists. I am torn because to feasibly do this correctly, i would have content that is built from multiple sources, but has no real unique content. It would have parts from Wikipedia, parts from other websites etc. All would be sourced of-course. My concern is that if i do this, am i risking in devaluing my website because of this. Is there a way i can handle this without taking a hit?
Web Design | | BorisD0 -
Image sliders & site speed
We are having a new website designed using WordPress and the Genesis framework. We wanted to include header image sliders on a number of internal site pages, but our designer says that sliders on more than just the home page will slow down the site significantly. How much could they slow down the site, and what can be done to minimize their effect on site speed?
Web Design | | GordyH0 -
Branding site
We are starting a new used car site in latam, and we are in the process of developing the brand, part of the team would like to have the "auto" (spanish for car" in the name and some no. The question is, form a SEO point of view, how strong signal is to have the string auto as part as the URL, and can you have a complete unrelated url and have several URLs with the auto string on it pointing in a 301 way to the non unrelated brand name as a way around? (sorry about my english, I hope you can understand the question) PS, yes, there are a lot of queries involving auto in our target market.
Web Design | | Bligoo0 -
What are some on-pg recommendations for a flash resort site?
One of my clients want to be index for all their pages but I am afraid the website may have difficulty since it is all in flash. The website is a luxury brand for resorts. The website is me.graficode.com/preprod/ and currently has 6 main subfolers for resorts. Please let me know what recommendations will help me organically. It is hard to add content which will cause probelms for headers and keyword density.
Web Design | | Melia0