Drop Down Menu - Link Juice Depletion
-
Hi,
We have a site with 7 top level sections all of which contain a large number of subsections which may then contain further sub sections.
To try and ensure the best user experience we have a top navigation with the 7 top level sections and when hovered a selection of the key sub sections.
Although I like this format for the user as it makes it easier for them to find the most important sections / sub sections it does lead to a lot of links within every page on the site. In general each top section has a drop down with approx 10 - 15 subsections.
This has therefore lead to SeoMoz's tools issuing its too many internal links warning. Then alongside this I am left wondering if I shouldn’t have to many links to my subsections and whether I would be better off being more selective of when I link to them. For instance I could choose the top 5 sub sections and place a link to them from our homepage and by doing so I would be passing a greater amount of link juice down the line.
So I guess my dilemma is between ensuring the user has as easy a time traversing the site as possible whilst I try to keep a close watch on where, and how, our link juice is distributed.
One solution I am considering is whether no-follow links could be utilised within the drop down menus? This way I could then have the desired user navigation and I would be in greater control of what pages link to which sub sections. Would that even work?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated,
Regards,
Guy
-
I work for a company that closely mirrors the dropdowns employed by a very large ecommerce site - http://www.surlatable.com/.
Upon analysis of this URL, there are well over 100 links on that page because of the way their dropdowns are designed (over 400 in fact). However, upon close analysis, only 52 of these internal links are followed, and 370 internal links are not followed.
Based on this, I would recommend if you have well in excess of 150 or so links, use nofollow for those less important sub categories like this site has. (I'll have to change the structure of our site now...)
-
Really appreciate the informative reply. Like you I'm currently the SEO for an ecommerce store which has so many variations and sections that it can be a real headache. We've made good progress flattening the sections and I think from what you said, and a Matt Cutts article I just read on the subject, I'll remove the nofollows, leave Google to it, and take things from there.
-
This is an interesting question. It also goes with what to do with a mega menu and all its links. I've wondered whether the SE can understand that this is in fact a navigation (you would think they would) for internal links and not penalize your links in the body of the of the page.
According to Google's John Mueller when discussing about HTML5 he stated the following:
"In general, our crawlers are used to not being able to parse all HTML markup - be it from broken HTML, embedded XML content or from the new HTML5 tags. Our general strategy is to wait to see how content is marked up on the web in practice and to adapt to that ..." http://goo.gl/0YehV
You would then believe from that statement that the SE can differentiate navigation menus and drop down list from links in the body? I mean the SE must have crawled zillions of page and that would be a natural conclusion?
That being said I've use two strategies; the first embedding the select options in javascript... something like this
`**<script type="text/javascript"> /* "); document.write("<option values=" ">Select a Property...<\/option>"); document.write("</option><optgroup label="Beach Estates">");</optgroup>** document.write("<option value="\/alii-estate\/">Alii Estate<\/option>");** ......** **......**</option>` **This seems to work well.... but not sure if it is actually crawled** The other strategy that I am more in favor with is to position the drop down list or navigation with a position:absolute; and then place them physically at the bottom of the page ... this seems a better way, but it can affect the site links. I've not done any real testing on this. Burt Gordon
-
Hi Guy. In terms of no-follow for page rank sculpting purposes, I've read the pros and cons of both and for me I've concluded I'd rather direct the juice where I want it to go rather than to block or prevent it from flowing where I don't want it to flow. No-follow can have unintended results, so I prefer the alternative.
Volume of categories and how to structure them is a challenge for a lot of ecommerce folks (me included). I've recently started flattening my site. While development of useful and intuitive sub-categories helps people find what they want on the 3rd or 4th click, crawl penetration suffers due to the depth. By flattening my site I mean reducing the number of sub-categories that can only be reached by other sub-categories - which is basically moving 3rd or 4th level categories up to the second level or top level (left nav).
A large and top ranking Toy Store I visit often to see how they structure their links has a top nav with categories, a left nav with categories and a sitemap in the footer. Each navigation entry has either different links in it or some different anchor text linking to the same pages. After much reading and apparent consensus among veteran users in this forum, I nixed the sitemap as unnecessary if I use good linking practice throughout the site. One Guru even suggested a sitemap can hurt your rankings if every page is linked to every other page with juice diminishing returns.
In my case, I created a left nav link to additional categories and put categories or sub-categories in them that were either: 1. Removed from the left nav because they were not important enough to be on the left nav 2. Removed from the left nav because on-page analytics suggested they didn't warrant being on the homepage. 3. Were a 3rd or 4th level category that on-page analytics showed there was enough demand to move its link to a second level or top level.
I hope this works for me and could of some help to you. Good luck.
-
Thank you for the link, I had a read and I've also been making the nofollow adjustments I suggested above.
We have tried to break down the menus into simple, managable chunks. Therefore we are really only linking to important categories. That said we can obviously deem some to be more important to us than others. As such i've employed nofollow tags within the menu on the links which won't generate as much ROI.
Is there any problem with having a nofollow to a certain page within our menu, and then a followed link to that same page within the main page content?
-
10-15 dropdown links per tab is a lot to fit on the screen, but in my opinion the "too many links on the page" error is a bit overdone. How many total links appear on your pages on average? Unless you're blowing way past the general rule of thumb of 100 links, you're ok.
E.G. if most of your pages have 100-120 or less then don't worry about it. If most of your pages have upwards of 150+ links then definitely reassess how useful each link is to the user, and consider cutting down.
Here's an in-depth answer by Dr. Pete: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-many-links-is-too-many
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
-
Can I use a 301 redirect to pass 'back link' juice to a different domain?
Hi, I have a backlink from a high DA/PA Government Website pointing to www.domainA.com which I own and can setup 301 redirects on if necessary. However my www.domainA.com is not used and has no active website (but has hosting available which can 301 redirect). www.domainA.com is also contextually irrelevant to the backlink. I want the Government Website link to go to www.domainB.com - which is both the relevant site and which also should be benefiting from from the seo juice from the backlink. So far I have had no luck to get the Government Website's administrators to change the URL on the link to point to www.domainB.com. Q1: If i use a 301 redirect on www.domainA.com to redirect to www.domainB.com will most of the backlink's SEO juice still be passed on to www.domainB.com? Q2: If the answer to the above is yes - would there be benefit to taking this a step further and redirect www.domainA.com to a deeper directory on www.domianB.com which is even more relevant?
Technical SEO | | DGAU
ie. redirect www.domainA.com to www.domainB.com/categoryB - passing the link juice deeper.0 -
Site Link Issues
For several search terms I get site links for the page http://www.waikoloavacationrentals.com/kolea-rentals/kolea-condos/ It makes sense that that page be a site link as it is one of my most used pages, but the problem is google gave it the site link "Kolea 10A". I am having 0 luck making any sense of why that was chosen. It should be something like "Kolea Condos" or something of that nature. Does anyone have any thoughts on where google is coming up with this?
Technical SEO | | RobDalton0 -
Image Impression Drop
On August 8th we started to see our Image Impressions in Google Webmaster Tools start to plummet. Has anyone else run into this issue? I have not been able to find any news on Google Algos which my have caused this. Any other ideas what could have caused this? jxPmLwO
Technical SEO | | joebuilder0 -
So weird sudden drop in rankings
Hi All, ok so at the beginning of July we launched our new website, SEVEN weeks later we have dropped completly off all rankings what-so-ever, (except brand) but weirdly if i pan between browsers we dont use (for saved searches/cookies etc) sometimes the rankings show up where they used to be. Whats strange is we get crawled daily but it took seven weeks for our rankings to drop, ive done all testing i can - no manual actions, no updates when we dropped (15th Aug) no real differences in webmaster tools, no crawl errors, no massive rise in 404s, 500s etc etc, im really a bit stumped! Any help would be mucho appreciated in diagnosing this stumper!
Technical SEO | | Kennelstore0 -
Rankings drop after Panda
Hi All, My site dropped completely out of the SERPS on September 27th. I've tried everything I know to do (re-wrote all content, disavow links tool, filed DCMA complaints, de-optimized on-page content, made anchor text less aggressive, etc). Can you all please take a look at www.doctorloanusa.com and let me know what you think the problem is and how much you'd charge to help? Keywords used to be: doctor loans, physician loans. I ranked 2 or 3 for those keywords consistently for over 4 years. I know I need more content, but I feel like it's a waste of time creating it. If a thin site was the issue, wouldn't I at least rank SOMEWHERE in the 1000 results? Thanks for your consideration. At my wits end.
Technical SEO | | Cary_Forest0 -
Nofollow links if you have more than one link on a page to the same destination.
Hi, I am wondering if someone can confirm that its best practice to have nofollow on secondary links on a page. For instance the contact page may have a link in the navigation and in the the blurb down the page have another link to the contact page saying contact us here etc.. So in this instance i would put a nofollow on the secondary link in the blurb would this be the best way to impliment this. Many thanks Chris
Technical SEO | | InteractiveRed670 -
Too many external links?
Ok, so I am finally focusing more on SEO of my hobby website as I am notice the relavent keywords are not really onsite what I want, for example, according to analytics "post" is my most popular keyword which I assume is from the vbulletin forum. My question today is that according to the moz scan, my forum has too many external links, my question is what are some measures I can do whether within the vbulletin forum or custom coding to reduce the amount of links/increase power? www.rcnightmare.com
Technical SEO | | TheTippingPoint0 -
301 from a Link Directory
Hey guys. I am more looking for advice to confirm something on this one if anyone could offer help? My client has a reciprocal only link directory that is actually ranking higher than their company website. Surely from an SEO point of view, in this instance, it would make sense to kill the link directory and put a re-direct on the whole thing over to their main site? Would appreciate any advice on this one 🙂
Technical SEO | | Nextman0