Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Best practice for footer in ecommerce - Shall I add Top Category links?
-
What would you recommend regarding links to "Top Products" and "Top Categories" in footer?
- Would you add them to give extra link juice to top categories?
- would you try to avoid category links in footer that are already in the header navigationor in the main content area to avoid linking twice from all pages?
- would you vary these top category links in footer according to main category
-
thanks for the feedback. Will stick to few dynamic footer category links and test it.
-
Takeshi gave some great advise, and I agree.
I do like the idea of varying the footer navigation by category though. For example, you might interlink Men's Shoes with Women's Shoes, but you wouldn't want to link to Women's Shoes from Men's Shirts. Keeping the footer from being site-wide and making the links more relevant to the page their on will, I think, allow those footer links to carry more weight than they would otherwise.
Whatever you choose, make sure it's best for your users. Do that and it's difficult to go wrong.
-
Yeah, I'm not a big fan of mega menus or mega footers. Every link on a page dilutes the value of every other link on the page, so keep the number of links per page as low as possible, while optimizing for usability.
-
I agree with Takeshi. You should put more emphasis on what users want.
However based on my experience, if you limit the URLs to say 4-5 you would see some benefits. However if you plan to put much more, I wouldn't so much advice it.
K
-
Links in the footer carry very little link value, so I wouldn't add top category links to the footer just for SEO purposes. Looks at it more from a design/user experience perspective. If having the links in the footer makes navigation easier, then go for it.
As with anything else, the best thing to do is to test it. Install a click tracker such a CrazyEgg or ClickTale and see how people actually navigate the site. Test having the links in the footer vs removing them, and see if it affects usability, conversions rates, or SEO performance. Then keep the links that work the best.
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
-
Using h2 for category on ecommerce website
Hi, I am working on an ecommerce site and the main category - lets call them car widgets - is using a h1 at the top of the page which is great. There are 4 sub categories on the page - lets call one of them red widget. The only content on the page is the sub category name and an image. Should the sub category red widget use a h2? Thanks S
On-Page Optimization | | bedynamic0 -
Auto loading articles ?- best practices
Hi all! In the past months I see more and more website that doing 'auto loading articles in scrolling' - can you tell me if it's okay for SEO and what are the best practices for this? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | JohnPalmer1 -
Link in H1 tag?
Hi guys, We're working through a redesign of our product page and are considering the following: http://screencast.com/t/NBSsDGA9vgS3 Currently the product name (including the brand name - Arc'teryx) in this case is included in the H1 and none of the title is linked. You can see this here: http://www.evo.com/synthetic-jackets/arcteryx-atom-lt-hoodie-womens.aspx The firm we're working with is proposing keeping the entire title in the H1 but linking the brand name to the entire brand assortment. My concern is that the brand name is a critical part of the product title and should be text (not a link). Any suggestions? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | evoNick
Will0 -
ECommerce Filtering Affect on SEO
I'm building an eCommerce website which has an advanced filter on the left hand side of the category pages. It allows users to tick boxes for colours, sizes, materials, and so on. When they've made their choices they submit (this will likely be an AJAX thing in a future release, but isn't at time of writing). The new filtered page has a new URL, which is made up of the IDs of the filter's they've ticked - it's a bit like /department/2/17-7-4/10/ My concern is that the filtered pages are, on the most part, going to be the same as the parent. Which may lead to duplicate content. My other concern is that these two URLs would lead to the exact same page (although the system would never generate the 'wrong' URL) /department/2/17-7-4/10/ /department/2/**10/**17-7-4/ But I can't think of a way of canonicalising that automatically. Tricky. So the meat of the question is this: should I worry about this causing issues with the SEO - or can I have trust in Google to work it out?
On-Page Optimization | | AndieF0 -
Best practice for Portfolio Links
I have a client with a really large project portfolio (over 500 project images), which causes their portfolio page to have well over the 100 links that are recommended. How can I reduce this without reducing the number of photos they can upload?
On-Page Optimization | | HochKaren0 -
How many outbound links is too many outbound links?
As a part of our SEO strategy, we have been focusing on writing several high quality articles with unique content. In these articles we regularly link to other websites when they are high quality, authoritative sites. Typically, the articles are 500 words or more and have 3-5 outbound links, but in some cases there are as many as 7 or 8 outbound links. Before we get too carried away with outbound links, I wanted to get some opinions on how many outbound links we should be trying to include and more information on how the outbound links work. Do they pass our website's authority on to the other website? Could our current linking strategy cause future SEO problems? Finally, do you have any suggestions for guidelines we should be using? Thank you for your help!
On-Page Optimization | | airnwater0 -
What is on page links?
Hi - i would like to know exactly what an on page link is? i understand the linking system however cant work what exactly what an on page link is? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | OasisLandDevelopment0 -
Title tag for category page
I'd like to know your views on the best approach for title tags for category pages for ecommerce sites. 3 examples A) Category name | Free delivery on $50 purchase | Brand name B) Discover best "category name" on brand name C) Category Name | 1st Keyword, 2nd keyword | Brand name Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | walidalsaqqaf0
