Html 5 main and secondary navigation for SEO best performances
-
I am building a website which will have a main navigation related to the site and each link of the main navigation will have a secondary navigation. We do not want to use a megamenu style navigation. I will try to explain it with a example:
Let's start with an example for a computer store "My PC Store", the Main Navigation would be:
Desktop PC's Notebook & Tablets
MultimediaWhen clicking on the "Notebook & Tablets" the user is directed to the page domain.com/notebook-tablet.html and on this page the secondary navigation appears: Laptop Netbook Tablets / iPad I am confused on how I should organize the semantic navigation for best SEO performances and I need advice / suggestions. I thought about 2 different ways to do it but which one is more appropriate in terms of SEO? PROPOSITION A Home Page:
<header>
My PC Store <nav>
- Desktop PC's
- Notebook & Tablets
- Multimedia </nav> </header>
Sub-Page (Notebook & Tablets):
<nav>(or
<aside>?)
- Desktop PC's
- Notebook & Tablets
- Multimedia </aside>
</nav>
<header>
Notebook & Tablets <nav>
- Laptop
- Netbook
- Tablets / iPad </nav> </header>
As you notice on the home page the Main Site Navigation is included in the
<header>while it is not in the sub-pages.
PROPOSITION B
Home Page:
<header>
My PC Store
<nav>
-
Desktop PC's
-
Notebook & Tablets
-
Multimedia
</nav>
</header>
Sub-Page (Notebook & Tablets):
<header>
Notebook & Tablets <nav>
- Desktop PC's
- Notebook & Tablets
- Multimedia </nav> # Notebook & Tablets * Laptop
- Netbook
- Tablets / iPad </header>
The main navgation remains always in the
<header>(home page / sub-pages) of all page.
I need suggestions... How would you guys organize the nav ?
</header>
</header>
-
Apologies, typed that up wrong. Have updated above post.
-
Why are you inserting
outside
<header>?</header>
-
My apologies. I would go with the following example in order to maintain a good SEO with your webpage headers and also a solid navigation:
Home page:
<header>
My PC Store
<nav>
-
Desktop PC's
-
Notebook & Tablets
-
Multimedia
</nav>
</header>
Sub Page:
<header>
<nav>
Notebook & Tablets
*** Desktop PC's**
- Notebook & Tablets
*** Multimedia**
</nav>
</header>
**<nav>
- Laptop
- Netbook
- Tablets / iPad </nav>**
Hope this helps.
Matt.
-
-
OK but you don't answer to my question since we do not want any mega menu or drop down menu.
-
This is true if it is wrapped within JavaScript, so that the search engines cannot read it. However, if you use two separate navigation menus then you can negate this problem.
Also, if you were to code up the 'mega menu' style navigation with CSS3 then you could also avoid these crawling problems and make the navigation much more search-engine friendly.
In general, I try to avoid using sub-pages within site to extend navigation (unless it is completely different product areas or business verticals).
Matt.
-
Well there are in general SEO concerns in the use of navigation Mega Menu style and this is why we want to avoid it.
-
Hi There,
I think I have got the jist of what you're trying to achieve.
What I would recommend is that you have links to Desktop PC's, Notebook & Tablets, Multimedia, Laptop, Netbook, Tablets / iPad directly from your homepage. The reason being that this will allow the search engines to crawl your webpages easier and the subcategory pages won't be so deep within the domain.
What I mean is that I would use either a drop down list, so that when the Notebook & Tablets is hovered over, the subcategories are then displayed below it. Alternatively, you could have a secondory naviagtion on the homepage, i.e. with an extensive drop-down list lower down or at the side of the webpage.
Great examples of this type of navigation can be found on: http://www.ebuyer.com or http://www.musicmatters.co.uk/shop.html (look at the secondary nav on the right for the Music Matters shop page.
I hope this helps.
Matt.
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
-
What type of website is best for seo.
I need a new website for my health insurance business. What type is best for SEO? Many thanks
Web Design | | laurentjb0 -
Best Practices for Leveraging Long Tail Content & Gated Content
Our B2B site has a lot of of long form content (e.g., transcriptions from presentations and webinars). We'd like to leverage the long tail SEO traffic driven to these pages and convert those visitors to leads. Essentially, we'd like Google to index all this lengthy, keyword-rich content AND we'd like to put up a read gate that requires users to register before viewing the full article. This is a B2B site, and the goal is to generate leads. Some considerations and questions: How much of the content to share before requiring registration? Ask too soon and it's a terrible user experience, give too much away and our business objectives are not met. Design-wise, what are good ways to do this? I notice Moz uses a "teaser" to block Mozinar content, and I've seen modals and blur bars on other sites. Any gotchas that Google doesn't like that we should be aware of? Trying to avoid anything that might seem like cloaking. Is it better to split the content across several pages (split a 10K word doc across 10 URLs and include a read gate on each) or keep to one page? Thank you!
Web Design | | Allie_Williams0 -
Lots of Listing Pages with Thin Content on Real Estate Web Site-Best to Set them to No-Index?
Greetings Moz Community: As a commercial real estate broker in Manhattan I run a web site with over 600 pages. Basically the pages are organized in the following categories: 1. Neighborhoods (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/neighborhoods/midtown-manhattan) 25 PAGES Low bounce rate 2. Types of Space (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/commercial-space/loft-space)
Web Design | | Kingalan1
15 PAGES Low bounce rate. 3. Blog (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/how-long-does-leasing-process-take
30 PAGES Medium/high bounce rate 4. Services (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/brokerage-services/relocate-to-new-office-space) High bounce rate
3 PAGES 5. About Us (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/about-us/what-we-do
4 PAGES High bounce rate 6. Listings (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/305-fifth-avenue-office-suite-1340sf)
300 PAGES High bounce rate (65%), thin content 7. Buildings (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/928-broadway
300 PAGES Very high bounce rate (exceeding 75%) Most of the listing pages do not have more than 100 words. My SEO firm is advising me to set them "No-Index, Follow". They believe the thin content could be hurting me. Is this an acceptable strategy? I am concerned that when Google detects 300 pages set to "No-Follow" they could interpret this as the site seeking to hide something and penalize us. Also, the building pages have a low click thru rate. Would it make sense to set them to "No-Follow" as well? Basically, would it increase authority in Google's eyes if we set pages that have thin content and/or low click thru rates to "No-Follow"? Any harm in doing this for about half the pages on the site? I might add that while I don't suffer from any manual penalty volume has gone down substantially in the last month. We upgraded the site in early June and somehow 175 pages were submitted to Google that should not have been indexed. A removal request has been made for those pages. Prior to that we were hit by Panda in April 2012 with search volume dropping from about 7,000 per month to 3,000 per month. Volume had increased back to 4,500 by April this year only to start tanking again. It was down to 3,600 in June. About 30 toxic links were removed in late April and a disavow file was submitted with Google in late April for removal of links from 80 toxic domains. Thanks in advance for your responses!! Alan0 -
Any advice for best practice for mobile versions of websites?
Hi Mozzers, I am looking to develop a mobile version of one of my sites and was wondering what was considered best practice for the following: Where to host it: m.domain.com or domain.com/mobile ? Is rel='canonical' enough to avoid mobile version being indexed or should I use "noindex" on mobile version? How to handle tablets? Which screen size sees mobile version? Which sees full site version? Thanks in advance Geoff
Web Design | | SEM-Freak1 -
Websites with only one "html file" and page href # is good for SEO?
I bought one website from templatemonster that contains only one HTML and the pages are generated by links (PROGRAMACAO) My website: www.nextformaturas.com.br This is good in term of SEO? or it is better an website with deveral pages with diferent contents? What are the pros and cons? I really lost on this.
Web Design | | Naghirniac0 -
How do you get rid of the .html and .php extensions at the end of urls?
What is the whitehat way to properly remove the .html and .php extensions at the end of urls? Example: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo.php should be (and is) http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo
Web Design | | Ryan-Bradley0 -
Any discussions on the actual web page design and how it might affect SEO?
Are there any links to previous discussions or tips, techniques for how creative design has any impact on seo??
Web Design | | theideapeople1 -
Is my company's privacy policy diluting our SEO efforts?
Good morning! I'm new to the SEOmoz community. This morning, I spot checked a couple pages using the Term Extractor. When looking at the results, I noticed that we're ranking for many of the terms contained in our privacy policy. Our privacy policy is set up in the footer of our page templates and appears as a light box that pops up over the page you're viewing, so it looks like every page (from a search engines perspective) contains every word of our 900-word privacy policy. Since several of our legal terms are showing up as "targeted terms" within the tool, would it benefit me to change the privacy policy link from a light box to something else? Perhaps a link to a static page that contains our privacy policy instead? Are the search engines smart enough to see the repeating text and ignore it from page to page, or am I just diluting all of my SEO efforts here? I'm after big wins here, and don't want to be too nitpicky, but concerned this could be a big SEO no-no that I might want to correct. Thanks in advance for your expertise! Ben Culbert
Web Design | | SheriGolla0