Good Site Navigation verses Success
-
I have been experimenting with the number of links on our pages verses the number of hits we get. Success seems to be tied to having hundreds of links on a page verses ease of navigation.
We have a research company that sells research on educational topics. Last November I decided to divide our category of literature research topics into 10 different subtopics and redistribute the links to the subtopic pages. The main literature research page had over 800 links on it. It was one of our top performing pages. I was hoping that by spreading the links out in logical categories i could distribute the wealth and have better navigation for the user. Now after 6 months the traffic to that page has dropped 800% and the sub-pages have only gained a very minimal percentage. Overall, the hits in the literature genre have dropped from 560 per month to around 80. Ouch!
I thought Google would love this strategy, as it reduced page load time, links on a page and made the navigation logical and easier to see all available options. Not the case.
Question is: Should I keep the subpages but go back and put all the links back on the main literature page, putting it back up to 800 links? Should I get rid of the subpages, because the links will all be on the main literature page if I move them?
Any advice is appreciated!
Karen
-
Good idea Journeyman. I started to wonder if it is maybe the actual sub catagories that I chose rather than the structure. I'll dig into that more.
Thank you!
Karen
-
Hi Karen,
8 months is a long time when you're in the throes of Google. Your problem might not revolve entirely around your navigation.
However in answer to your question - are they the right subpages?
Personally I'd do a card sorting exercise to determine which sub categories your users are expecting to see. You can normally back this data up with some keyword research to see which sub category type terms are generating a lot of search volumes.
For example if you've got a page called "English Literature 1800-1850" and more people are searching for "Romanticism period in English literature" then maybe you've got the wrong subpage.
It is a bit of work, especially joining up the keyword research with the card sorting but at least you'll know that you've got the right sub categories.
Hope that helps at least a little.
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
-
Is there a benefit to hiding words from Google on ecommerce sites?
I think we all know that ecommerce sites have a lot of repeating functional texts on them. Is there a benefit from hiding this text from Google's crawler? Take this page for example, http://storage3.static.itmages.com/i/16/0805/h_1470425505_1090542_224cc344d4.png Some of the most dense words on the page are "Add to cart", "Add to Wishlist", "New", and "Sale". Is there any benefit to hiding those words from Google? The method of hiding I am talking about is not cloaking, but this, https://www.google.com/support/enterprise/static/gsa/docs/admin/70/gsa_doc_set/admin_crawl/preparing.html#1076243 using the google:off index tag. So the content will be there still, but it will not be indexed.
On-Page Optimization | | LesleyPaone0 -
Navigational Links in Dropdown Menus
Hi Mozzers will navigational links in dropdown menus carry the same weight for Google, just as navigational links that are always visible to the user do? Thx, Chris
On-Page Optimization | | Diderino0 -
Multilingual site with untranslated content
We are developing a site that will have several languages. There will be several thousand pages, the default language will be English. Several sections of the site will not be translated at first, so the main content will be in English but navigation/boilerplate will be translated. We have hreflang alternate tags set up for each individual page pointing to each of the other languages, eg in the English version we have: etc In the spanish version, we would point to the french version and the english version etc. My question is, is this sufficient to avoid a duplicate content penalty for google for the untranslated pages? I am aware that from a user perspective, having untranslated content is bad, but in this case it is unavoidable at first.
On-Page Optimization | | jorgeapartime0 -
E-Commerce Site - Duplicate Content
We run an e-commerce site with about 250,000 SKUs. Certain items, such as a micro USB car charger, will be applicable to several different phones. Example: http://www.wirelessemporium.com/p-165787-samsung-galaxy-proclaim-illusion-sch-i110-heavy-duty-car-charger.asp http://www.wirelessemporium.com/p-165856-sony-xperia-ion-4g-lte-att-heavy-duty-car-charger.asp As one can imagine with so many items, unique content for each item description page can be a challenge. What would be the best way to address this on a large scale?
On-Page Optimization | | eugeneku0 -
What precaution should we take to change the default page of the site
For some reason we wanted to change the default page of my site from example.com to example.com/default.aspx. We will be using 301 redirection to get the back link benefits. Do we need to make any changes in webmaster tool and sitemap too??
On-Page Optimization | | CyrilWilson0 -
Anchor text in Ecommerce site without relevant pages
I'm posting articles to my e-commerce site and just wondering about the anchor text links within the posts. I don't have relevant static pages but the items do come up in a search query. For example i don't have a specific page for red wine but if a user searched for red wine it would give a search query URL. Should I use that search URL query as my anchor text?
On-Page Optimization | | acs1110 -
Can I add a blog to different pages of my site?
I would like to ad a blog to a few different pages of my site, is this possible? I would prefer it to not be a stand alone blog, because I am pretty sure it would begin to outrank my landing pages in search results. I built my site using dreamweaver, but I have seen a reference somewhere to a utility for adding a word press blog to an existing site? This site seems to be doing what I had in mind? http://www.drynclean.com/
On-Page Optimization | | ayetti0 -
Is allowing comments a good idea?
One (in fact a couple) of my sites is built using Wordpress so I could take advantage of things like Related Posts widgets, etc. However, the layout and navigation of the site is set up more like a traditional website rather than a blog and from the beginning I removed the comment box from the template. I am wondering now whether allowing comments would actually be a good idea for SEO, or if I should leave it as it is. The content of the site doesn't really offer opinions (aside from a few product reviews) so to my mind comments dont really fit. Thoughts or opinions readily welcomed...
On-Page Optimization | | Jingo010