Should the primary navigation use keyword rich menu items?
-
There doesn't seem to be a definitive (or even authoritative) answer to this.
The quandry is primary top navigation - the client wants to use 2-3 keyword length nav items, and I'm politely forcing him to use single word nav. The problem is that I have nothing to back up that assertion other than "this way looks better".
Examples -
Site is www.buybluewidgets.com. The client wants:
- About Our Blue Widgets
- Buy a Blue Widget
- Azure Widget Information
- Sell Your Blue Thingamajig
My suggestion is:
- About Us
- Buy
- Learn
- Sell
-
I agree with Irving. Over optimization of sitewide anchor text links is a big no no and there is definitive documentation about the penguin update.
Here is a great article on the topic: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/recovering-from-the-penguin-update-a-true-story
Does your client actually think that visitors to the site won't understand that About Us actually means About the Blue Widget Company?
Perhaps a quote from Google Webmaster Guidelines is in order:
"Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit."
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769&topic=2370419&ctx=topic
-
Since those are sitewide links you don't want your main anchor texts to be repeated over and over, so i would go with your suggestion to avoid over optimization. I would still link in content with those keywords but I would mix it up and vary the anchor texts, and not do sitewide keywords like what the client wants, unless you do it one maybe one link only.
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
-
Which woocommerce product filter plugin should I use?
Hi! I have to choose a premium woocommerce product filter plugin, but I can't make up my mind since there are so many options out there. I tried to compare some of them, but I would like to hear from experts or people who already bought and run one of them on their websites in order to focus on the better one. Is there a particular plugin which stands out from the crowd? Are there product filter plugins you definitely do not recommend buying? What I am looking for is a SEO oriented plugin( some search results by filters like sizes, colors, in stock /out of stock should not be indexed at all while categories should be normally indexed), easy to use (I am not a developer and I have to be able to set up filters by myself easily), compatible with wpml and and, last but not least, the plugin support should be reliable and helpful. I am looking forward to your suggestions. thanks in advance
Web Design | | manunika0 -
Is it against google guidelines to use third party review sites as well as have reviews on my site marked up with schema?
So, i look after a site for my family business. We have teamed up with the third party site TrustPilot because we like the way it enables us to send out reviews to our customers directly from our system. It's been going great and some of the reviews have been brilliant. I have used a couple of these reviews on our site and marked them up with: REVIEW CONTENT We work in the service industry and so one of the problems we have found is that getting our customers to actually go online and leave a review. They normally just leave their comments on a job sheet that the workers have signed when they leave. So I have created a page on our site where we post some of the reviews the guys receive too. I have used the following: REVIEW TITLE REVIEW Written by: CUSTOMER NAME Type of Service:House Removal Date published: DATE PUBLISHED 10 / 10 stars I was just wondering I was told that this could be against googles guidelines and as i've seen a bit of a drop in our rankings in the last week or so i'm a little concerned. Is this getting me penalised? Should I not use my reviews referencing the ones on trust pilot and should i not have my own reviews page with rich snippets?
Web Design | | BearPaw881 -
2 Menu links to same page. Is this a problem?
One of my clients wants to link to the same page from several places in the navigation menu. Does this create any crawl issues or indexing problems? It's the same page (same url) so there is no duplicate content problems. Since the page is promotional, the client wants the page accessible from different places in the nav bar. Thanks, Dino
Web Design | | Dino640 -
Using a query string for linked, static landing pages - is this good practice?
My company has a page with links for each of our dozen office locations as well as a clickable map. These offices are also linked in the footer of every page along with their phone number. When one of these links is clicked, the visitor is directed to a static page with a picture of the office, contact information, a short description, and some other information. The URL for these pages is displayed as something like http:/example.com/offices.htm?office_id=123456, with seemingly random ID numbers at the end depending on the office that remain static. I know first off that this is probably bad SEO practice, as the URL should be something like htttp://example.com/offices/springfield/ My question is, why is there a question mark in the page URL? I understand that it represents a query string, but I'm not sure why it's there to begin with. A search query should not required if they are just static landing pages, correct?. Is there any reason at all why they would be queries? Is this an issue that needs to be addressed or does it have little to no impact on SEO?
Web Design | | BD690 -
Is there a best practice for using a general iso code for the EAME region and APAC region or should you break it out by country?
I am creating a strategy for multiple regions and the US comes to market different than EAME (Europe, Africa, Middle East) and China. We were planning on using language and iso codes in subfolder's but the corporation only wants their content to be in German, English, and Queens English. Our current decision is to use /en-US/, /en/, /de/, /en-CN/, /zh-CN/. /en/ and /de/ will be what we use for EAME. This doesn't seem like the best idea as I think /en/ will get indexed as the US version and not the EAME version. Any suggestion or if clarification is needed is greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | GodfreyB2B0 -
Does having a Blog link in the top level navigation provide any better SEO value, or would having it in a footer or top navigation work just as good?
Trying to decide on whether placing a link to the blog in our top level navigation would have a better SEO value than just placing it in top or footer navigation. I have an ecommerce site.
Web Design | | RPD0 -
Amazon s3 how do i use it as a cdn service
Hi i have signed up to s3 amazon and have uploaded my images to my bucket but the trouble i am having is, how do i have the images on my site. i have tried to use the url that it is showing but all that is doing is https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/in2town/audreyrobertslarge.jpg not bringing up the image on my site and when i have done it through the internet search box it does not bring up an image. I have been told this is a great cdn service and a cost effective one but i really need to learn how to use it. has anyone used this service and if so can you please let me know what i need to do I have now managed to get a bit futher with the help of stuart Bell but the images are still not showing on my site. any help would be great. many regards
Web Design | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Using Wordpress as CMS for large Websites
Is Wordpress good enough to be used as a full fledge CMS for a large website. In particular, I'm talking about a news website. We have been online since 2002 but pretty soon we will have digitized our print newspaper archives of about 60 years. So, my question is, is it OK to use Wordpress for the entire website and if so what are some of the important things that need to be kept in mind. Cheers!
Web Design | | RishadShaikh590