Looking for feedback about "look-ahead" navigation
-
Our company has been creating websites where the navigation is developed in such a way as to allow the visitor to get a preview of the image and/or content on that is on the page. Here are two websites that use this technology:
http://www.uniquepadprinting.com/
http://www.empathia.com/ (On this site, the previews are only available if you click on "Whole", "Productive" or "Safe" at the top of the page.I'm looking for feedback such as:
- What do you call this type of navigation (We call it look-ahead, but I can't find much info that term on the web)
- Have you experienced any issues with this type of navigation?
- Do you have any recommendations on it?
Some of the things we've seen are:
- It adds the same content to every page of the website
- It creates a lot of internal links
- It can create a lot of code on pages
- It can slow page-load times
-
I think developers think too much about how their code impacts search results. It's the visual content that is most important to google. As long as it can crawl it, you're generally in good shape with the code.
-
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your response. I'm glad you like the look; I agree it can be a cool addition.However, I was surprised that you stated the sites don't add much code. If you take a closer look at the code of any of the interior pages of Unique Pad Printing, for example, you will see that the navigation takes up over 200 lines of code. Original content doesn't appear until you get to line 411 of the code.
Compare this to another site, such as http://www.industrialvacuum.com. The navigation only takes 30 lines of code, and original content appears in line 124.
-
I'm not sure it does any of those things. It does create additional code but not much. I think it's kind of cool. Would be nice if the display block were clickable, though.
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
-
Should i noindex/nofollow a faceted navigation page?
I have an ecommerce website with 4 departments, that share the same categories, For example a bicycle shop would have different products for mountain biking and road cycling, but they would both share the same 'tyres' category. I get around this by having the department as a filter, that changes the products on show, and adds a URL parameter of ?department=1. When this filter is applied, i have a canonical link setup to the non-filtered category. Any filter links are nofollowed. My top menu has 4 different sections, one for each department, and links to these URLs with the department parameter already on, these links are set to allow robots to follow. As i am actively pointing Google at these pages, and it is my main navigation, should the page they go to be noindexed? As its the canonical i want to rank. Hopefully this makes sense. Cheers
Technical SEO | | SEOhmygod0 -
404 or rel="canonical" for empty search results?
We have search on our site, using the URL, so we might have: example.com/location-1/service-1, or example.com/location-2/service-2. Since we're a directory we want these pages to rank. Sometimes, there are no search results for a particular location/service combo, and when that happens we show an advanced search form that lets the user choose another location, or expand the search area, or otherwise help themselves. However, that search form still appears at the URL example.com/location/service - so there are several location/service combos on our website that show that particular form, leading to duplicate content issues. We may have search results to display on these pages in the future, so we want to keep them around, and would like Google to look at them and even index them if that happens, so what's the best option here? Should we rel="canonical" the page to the example.com/search (where the search form usually resides)? Should we serve the search form page with an HTTP 404 header? Something else? I look forward to the discussion.
Technical SEO | | 4RS_John1 -
What to look for when evaluating a forum solution from an SEO perspective
Hi, I am investigating forum solutions. I would be interested in hearing people's thoughts / experience on what criteria and requirements to consider purely from an SEO perspective when looking at a forum solution.
Technical SEO | | JagexSEO0 -
Wordpress "incoming search terms" plugin
Hello everyone! newbie to SEO and have been trying to keep everything nice and ethical but I've seen on a couple of blogs today "incoming search terms" at the bottom of the blogs, then a bullet pointed list of search terms beneath it. So I had a quick search about the use of it and noticed wordpress has a plugin that automatic ally generates these "incoming search terms". I ask is this a legitimate plugin or will this harm my blog? I assume it generally will as I can't see this being much use for the audience, rather it would be 100% for trying to lure in search engines.
Technical SEO | | acecream0 -
Campaign Issue: Rel Canonical - Does this mean it should be "on" or "off?"
Hello, somewhat new to the finer details of SEO - I know what canonical tags are, but I am confused by how SEOmoz identifies the issue in campaigns. I run a site on a wordpress foundation, and I have turned on the option for "canonical URLs" in the All in one SEO plugin. I did this because in all cases, our content is original and not duplicated from elsewhere. SEOmoz has identified every one of my pages with this issue, but the explanation of the status simply states that canonical tags "indicate to search engines which URL should be seen as the original." So, it seems to me that if I turn this OFF on my site, I turn off the notice from SEOmoz, but do not have canonical tags on my site. Which way should I be doing this? THANK YOU.
Technical SEO | | mrbradleyferguson0 -
How far into a page will a spider crawl to look for text?
How far into a page will a spider crawl to look for text? I've heard a spider will only crawl the first 3kb, but can't find an authoritative source for that information.
Technical SEO | | crvw0 -
What is best practice for redirecting "secondary" domain names?
For sites with multiple top-level domains that have been secured for a business or organization, I'm curious as to what is considered best practice for setting up 301 redirects for secondary domains. Is it best to do the 301 redirects at the registrar level, or the hosting level? So that .net, .biz, or other secondary domains funnel visitors to the correct primary/main domain name. I'm looking for the "best practice" answer and want to avoid duplicate content problems, or penalties from the search engines. I'm not trying to game the system with dozens of domain names, simply the handful of domains that are important to the client. I've seen some registrars recommend hosting secondary domains, and doing redirects from the hosting level (and they use meta refresh for "domain forwarding," which I want to avoid). It seems rather wasteful to set up hosting for a secondary domain and then 301 each URL.
Technical SEO | | Scott-Thomas0 -
Too many links on hompage - what to do with overloaded main navigation
Hi there, on my website (http://dealcity.de) I aggregate group shopping deals from Germany. To obtain a good user experience there is a large main navigation in the header where users can choose the city they are interested in. The problem is, that the main navigation has 220 links to all cities. Of course this is way to much on a fairly new site like this to have the link juice flown to the sites that are important to us. What should I do with the main navigation? Is there any way to remove these links from the linkgraph but keep the current user experience? Best Regards
Technical SEO | | marfert
Markus0