How do I reduce internal links & cannibalisation from primiary navigation?
-
SEOmoz tools is reporting each page on our site containing in excess of 200 internal links mostly from our primary navigation menu which it says is too many.
This also causes cannibalization on the word towels which i would like to avoid if possible.
Is there a way to reduce the number of internal links whilst maintaining a good structure to allow link juice to filter through the site and also reduce cannibalization?
-
Hi Marcus.
That sounds like a good Strategy. I am going to look at different structure on our dev site and see what works best overall from both technical and more importantly the customers point of view.
I'll definitely have a look at he apps you mentioned. They seem really interesting.
Once again, many thanks for your advise. Really helpful indeed
Regards
Craig
-
Hey Fraser,
taking a quick look again, you have a three tier nav, so you could just simplify it so it is only a two tier nav.
So,
Bed & Bath
- Bath Linen
- Bedroom
Embroidery
- Towels
- Bathrobes
- Kids
- Sports & Spa
The others all seem to just be a single depth anyhow so this could make the main sections of the site easily navigational and you still have your sub navigation which you could then maybe highlight a lttle more in the design.
So, if someone clicked on Towels, we would have the highlighted section and sub nav but if we maybe boxed it and added a header of something like
Browse Towels - Hand Towels
- Bath Towels- etc
My advice would always be to try it, see if it works out for you and improves any metrics you are tracking. Maybe install something like Crazy Egg heatmaps or click tracking so you can see how people are using the current nav (if at all) vs the sub navigation.
Certainly, a sub navigation is a convention, amazon etc use it, so people are used to this way of browsing. Just make sure your design shines a light on what you want people to do and I don't see any usability issues.
Hope this helps!
Marcus -
Hi Marcus,
That's is correct for our site.
I had thought of this and agree its technically the easiest way to deal with this, however I wonder how problematic it would be for the customer if they were trying to navigate say from a product to another category completely, there would be no easy way to do this. I am not convinced that the customer would use the breadcrumb trail to do so.
Maybe there is a way of utilising the primary navigation but limiting the number links from it.
Thanks for your help.
Craig
-
Hey Fraser
Is this your site: www.towelsrus.co.uk?
If so, the simple answer here would be to lose your drop down menus and give that a go. You already have a sub menu on each page once the user clicks through and a breadcrumb so someone can easily anchor themselves within the site should they land on one of these pages.
You then have a sub navigation on the primary category pages that allows people to navigate down to the long tail sub category pages like this one: Egyptain Cotton Hooded Bathrobes - which I am sure does not need to be linked to from every single page.
That should be technically easy enough and will make for a better overall site structure which is still easily spiderable via the sub navs. Equally, the canibalisation is likely not as big an issue as it appears but you will be removing multiple instances of keywords from the nav so that's not going to hurt.
I would give this a read:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-many-links-is-too-manyHope that helps!
Marcus
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
-
Internal anchor text
Hello, I am wondering how to deal with internal anchor text. I read here and there that it shouldn't be too optimised but I also read that this is how google understands what my page is aout. I have breadcrumbs with my main keyword in the anchor text and can't change that it is automatic. In other words if i have 10 breadcrumb going to my top page with the keyword can I be penalised ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
Link conundrum - losing nav/footer links in mobile view
Hi Moz folks! I'm currently moving a site from being hosted on www. and m. separately to a responsive single URL. The problem is, the desktop version currently has links to important landing pages in the footer (about 60) and that's not something we want to replicate on mobile (mainly because it will look pretty awful.) There is no navigation menu because the key to the homepage is to convert users to subscription so any distraction reduces conversion rate. The footer links will continue to exist on the desktop view but, since Google's mobile-first index, presumably we lose these important homepage links to our most important pages. So, my questions: Do you think there is any SEO value in the desktop footer links? Do you have any suggestions about how best to include these 60-odd links in a way that works for mobile? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | d_foley0 -
Pagination & Canonicals
Hi I've been looking at how we paginate our product pages & have a quick question on canonicals. Is this the right way to display.. Or should the canonical point to the main page http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/euro-containers-stacking-containers, so Google doesn't pick up duplicate meta information? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Pagination & SEO
Hi In one of my other Q&A's someone mentioned I may need to look at pagination. For instance, are these pages counted as 'new' pages in Google's eyes when clicking on pagination? http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/plastic-storage-boxes http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/plastic-storage-boxes#productBeginIndex:30&orderBy:5&pageView:list& Does anyone have any advice on what I could do? It's not something I have had much experience with. Thank you Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
ECommerce website with link to manufactures site for ordering - Should these links be follow or no follow?
Dear Mozzers, I have a couple of questions regarding link juice and whether I should have do follow or no follow links ? We have an affiliate eCommerce website and on our product pages we have a "Order online " button which will go our subdomain on the manufactures site in order for the user to complete the online ordering process So it's - www.ourcompany.co.uk - "Order Online Button" - www.manufactuer.ourcompany.co.uk Should this " Order online Button" be a Follow or No Follow link ? I ask this as currently from looking at Majestic seo , these "order online " buttons on my product pages seems to be Follow links so am I losing potential link juice by sending it externally ? Am I correct in assuming by changing it to be no follows, I would increase the link juice going elsewhere internally? thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Permanently using 301 for internal link
Hello Folks, Tried going through the 301 answers but could not find any question similar to what I had. The issue we have is we have got a listing page with the products like this: /used-peugeot/used-toyota-corolla As you can see this URL is not really ideal and I want to redirect it to /used-toyota/corolla using mod_rewrite. The redirect will be 301. My concern here is the URL in the listing page won't change to /used-toyota/corolla and hence the 301 will be 'permanently' placed and I was wondering if this will lose some link juice of the 301ed URL. Now with 301 being a 'permanent' redirect one would assume it should not be an issue but I just wanted to be sure that I am correct in assuming so. Thank you for your time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nirpan0 -
112 exact match anchor text internal links in the sidebar
Hello, My website has 112 internal exact match sidebar links for my targeted keyword. I rank nr.5 for this keyword in Google and i was wondering if i should remove those links or not? I know that footer link are no no but i am not sure about sidebar links. Any ideas? Regards, InigoOÜ
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | InigoOU0 -
Removed Internal Rel=NoFollows from power internal page - how long till reflected in Google?
I just started with a client, who has an internal page (not the homepage) that gets about 70% of all total links to the site and ranks #1 for a highly competitive keyword. For some reason, the first set of links, including the first anchor text link to the homepage are nofollowed. I removed the nofollows yesterday. Today, The internal page has already been reindexed in Google showing the followed anchor text link to the homepage Should I expect a jump in link juice pointing to my homepage immediately with a corresponding rankings boost? Homepage is #8 for target term. I hope this makes sense. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MattAaron0