The Affects of Removing Anchor Texts from Super Menu on Homepage
-
Hi,
Currently we have a div that drops down our super menu which has subcategories, ie. under Shop by Color (super menu) Black Ties, Blue Ties, Brown Ties, et, al. (see Ties.com Anchor Text image attached)
If we were to remove these subcategories from the div (in other words, they do not get crawled from homepage, will we loose ranking for those keywords?
We are trying to reduce link count on homepage.
Thoughts?
-
Hi Omar,
It really depends how you do it. If you are removing the dropdown from the navigation completely then these pages are going to be losing out on a lot of internal links as a result - every page on the site that was previously linking to them would have stopped.
Alternatively if you were just going to remove the dropdown from the homepage only i.e. have a different navigation format for the hompage, then it will not affect the pages as much.
Bear in mind that both ways you are removing links to these pages so there's a chance they will suffer slightly. You could test the effects by removing one category and monitoring rankings as a result.
On another note, I noticed some no followed links to internal pages at the bottom of the homepage. Have you done this for any particular reason? You may be losing PR for no reason.
Ben
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
-
Main menu duplication
I am working on a site that has just gone through a migration to Shopify at the very same time as Google did an update in October. So problems from day 1. All main menu categories have subsequently over the past 6 weeks fallen off a cliff. All aspects of the site have been reviewed in terms of technical, link profile and on-page, with the site in better shape than several ranking competitors. One issue that i'd like some feedback on is the main menu which has 4 iterations in the source. desktop desktop (sticky) mobile mobile (sticky - appears as a second desktop sticky but I assume for mobile) These items that are "duplicated" menus are the top level menu items only. The rest of the nested menu items are included within the last mobile menu option. So desktop menu in source doesn't include any of the sub-menu items, the mobile version carries all these there are 4 versions of the top level main menu items in source Should I be concerned? Considering we have significant issues should this be cleaned up?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
Ranking without use of keywords on page & without use of matching anchor text??
Howdy folks. So, here is a dilemma. One of competitors of ours is somehow ranking for a keyphrase "houston chronicle obituaries" without any usage of these keywords on the page, without any full or partial anchor text match ("chronicle" is not used anywhere). The rest of competitiors' rankings make sense. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DmitriiK0 -
Google shows date in the SERPS for the homepage
Hi SEO's we've build a site and our now trying to rank it but it won't go up despite of regular new unique content and a higher DA than most competitors. All tools like MOZ en Yoast SEO show green lights so we're kinda out of ideas right now. Till we saw the date in the SERPS for the meta description. This gives us the idea that Google sees it as a post and not as a page which might explain the low ranking. However there are no technical causes we can think off for Google to show the date. Any ideas on this matter? Could it be that Yoast SEO is causing this even although we tell it not to show dates? Love to hear from you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Heers0 -
Is irrelevant backlinks real? And does anchor text affect all keywords?
I ask because I see many of my competitors with irrelevant backlinks still ranking at the top, despite what SEO say about it. I have a Web Design business, most of my competitors have their backlinks from sites they built ie "website by _____" and thats how they rank at the top. Should I keep getting backlinks from my clients (with permission)? Also does anchor text on backlinks affect all keywords in your website? Example is if you provide multi services ie plastering and decorating. You have 100 links pointing to your site with anchor text of "plastering". Technically your site still has 100 backlinks, will that also help boost the onsite optimisation for the keyword "decorating"?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marvellous0 -
Google local pointing to Google plus page not homepage
Today my clients homepage dropped off the search results page (was #1 for months, in the top for years). I noticed in the places account everything is suddenly pointing at the Google plus page? The interior pages are still ranking. Any insight would be very helpful! Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stevenob0 -
Should I Remove Dates From My Old Posts
I have a web site that has content about home improvement topics but the site has no new content since 2010. All the posts on the wordpress site have the date which are all 2010 and prior. Is there a downside in terms of search engine rankings to remove the dates or changing the dates? What are the risks to removing the dates? Could I lose rankings if I do this? Do you have any personal experience with this situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alpha170 -
Changing the relevance of the homepage
One of my new clients is hell bent on changing the content of their homepage. They are one of the world's largest resort companies. The site is graphics-heavy (with embedded text), and barely contains any content. I haven't started any of the on-page optimization yet, but when I do, it will be a major overhaul. Despite the poor on-page of the site, they are getting great rankings and a ton of traffic due to number and quality of their backlinks and domain authority. My concern is this: they want to change the homepage and make it into a "vacation sweepstakes" type of page. Their logic seems to be that they will generate a lot of interest on the site and get people excited about winning an expensive dream vacation, which is all fine and dandy, however, my feeling is that this will change the relevance of the page. So, instead of pitching their ownership-based program, now, they will be promoting vacation contests. So here's the stupid question: would this have the potential to negatively affect their search engine results or the Domain Authority? I'm thinking of suggesting to them a less drastic approach. Perhaps something like the lightbox sweepstakes overlay on marshallsonline.com. At least, this way, we can keep the current homepage and improve on it, rather than going into another niche. Any feedback or suggestions on this is greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ollan0 -
Is white text on a white background an issue when...?
Hi guys, This question was loosely answered here (http://www.seomoz.org/q/will-google-index-a-site-with-white-text-will-it-give-it-bad-ratings), but I wanted to elaborate on the concern. The issue I have is this, http://www.searchenginexperts.com.au/preview/white-text-white-background-issue Of the four div elements on the page, which; is best practice for SEO? and which of them would not be penalized by google on the grounds of hidden text? The reason I ask is that I have a site that is currently implementing the first div styling, but if you either remove the image OR uncheck the repeat-x (in inspect element) the text is left as white on white. I have added the transparent image on green to prove that having a background colour to back up the tiled image is not always going to work. What can be done in this scenario? Thanks in advance, Dan (From my managers account)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RuchirP0
