How do I Avoid Excessive Internal Links on an eCommerce site?
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I think I'm getting dinged for this on Term Target because the page is full of products, which have links to their product page, but I'm not sure.
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From the usability point of view and to help sort the problem you're facing I would suggest a few things - first I would make sure that each page with products doesn't display more than say around 12 of them and use pagination or view all option for the rest of them. If you are using 'view all' option, make sure that it is not implemented by hiding the remaining products, but by actually loading them on request.
If you're navigation uses a lot of links try to tidy it up - perhaps grouping them under main categories, which when go to the sub-categories, also - try to use breadcrumbs, which are a good way of navigating backwards and not necessarily showing all these sub categories in the sub-navigation.
Additionally, you should check all of the column items - are there any unnecessary links, which could be taken off?
The E-commerce site is more user friendly when visitor doesn't have to think twice what to do - and too many items is not only bad from the usability point of view - but also - as you have found out for SEO.
As Nakul has mentioned - you should check any duplicate links - if you have any in the main navigation, then in the side bar and footer - perhaps you could remove a few of them and have them only in one place.
It's really more guessing here as I don't know what you're site looks like, but I hope this will help a little bit.
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I have seen certain "monster" brand-names doing stuff like shrinking their drop down menu's or completely disabling them on inner pages vs the homepage. IMO that is a big usability issue.
Imagine going to a homepage of a website and selecting Green Widgets from the Dropdown Widgets.
Now once you are on Green Widgets, you again mouseover on Widgets expecting the same dropdown, and it works. Good.
However, if you want to browse to a different product category, from the Green Widgets page, which lives under a different Tab, it doesn't work. I think that's a usability nightmare.
From Search Engine perspective, having the same redundant set of links in Header and Footer on every single page devalues the internal link juice you are passing from one page to another. It's a Catch 22 situation here.
In my experience, moving the repeating header and footer lower in the HTML helps. Other then that if the domain has decent authority and you are not facing any indexing issues, which you shouldn't I would not worry about it. It also depends on how many are too many
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