Is this type of navigation SEO friendly?
-
Hi mozzers,
I wanted to know if this type of navigation SEO friendly. Is it better than the regular drop down menu navigation?
Thanks!
-
Thank you guys for your contributions! Much appreciated!
-
Sitemaps serve a very different purpose from the on-page navigation, Dave. Both html and xml sitemaps are essential for helping ensure pages get crawled and indexed, but they do nothing to distribute and direct the ranking value from one page to another. So they help get your pages found by search engine crawlers but they won't help your rankings (i.e. getting found by your prospective visitors.)
Sitemaps are never a replacement for quality, well thought out, SE-accessible navigation and in-context links.
Paul
-
So long as you have an XML site map and a HTML sitemap, then Google shouldn't have any issues.
The HTML Sitemap could be a link at the bottom of your page
-
Just to update, Taysir - here's a screenshot of the same page with JavaScript disabled. Notice how the menu gracefully falls back to just a CSS-based regular dropdown. This is much more likely to be consistently crawled by search engines than the JS-dependent version.
This is the standard best practice for this type of situation, both for usability and SEO. A webpage should "just work" in a basic browser, and then can add additional appearance/functionality improvements for "enhanced" browsers. This is obviously what's best for users, and also gives the (very basic) search crawlers the best option as well.
In other words - mega menus are certainly NOT "better" for SEO, but they don't have to a problem either, if implemented correctly.
Hope that helps?
Paul
-
That's what's now typically referred to as a mega-menu, taysir. It uses JavaScript for the fancy display but If it's coded properly, there's a fallback version that uses regular html/CSS. (You can test by disabling JS in your browser then revisiting the page.)
Unlike Andy, I'm never willing to "trust" that search engines can handle JS-based navigation. It's just too big a risk for me. (Though his opinion is perfectly valid too). So I always make sure something JS-based like this has the CSS fallback version properly coded as well to be safest. Then I can certain it's SEO-friendly in all cases.
Jut my $0.02, adjusted for exchange rate and inflation
Paul
-
Depends. In their case it makes sense because they have too many links to have a typical drop down. Here's more content to read from Distilled which explains the dos and donts
-
It's a little awkward to tell as there is no URL to look at, but if Google is finding their way around your site, you can guess they probably have no issues.
Remember that Google is good at finding their way around Javascript menus, so these day, pretty much anything goes.
Just keep links natural, easy to follow and descriptive. You don't want to be trying anything spammy at this level.
-Andy
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
-
My SEO friend says my website is not being indexed by Google considering the keywords he has placed in the page and URL what does that mean?
My SEO friend says my website is not being indexed by Google considering the keywords he has placed in the page and URL what does that mean? We have added some text in the pages with keywords thats related the page
Technical SEO | | AlexisWithers0 -
Is blog.example.com ok for seo benefits?
our blog is currently setup as blog.example.com is this OK for seo benefits for the main domain example.com? is there any benefit specifically for the domain level by having the blog set-up as example.com/blog? would it be worth the effort to do this on a large blog? thanks
Technical SEO | | Direct_Ram0 -
Recommendation for SEO plugin for Wordpress
Dear Moz Community, Could I pick your brains on SEO plugins for WordPress? Our web developer has installed an SEO plugin called Yoast, and I am not quite sure of it's efficiency. The problem we have at the moment is that the Page Title is not updating on Google the way we anticipated. To solve this issue we unchecked forced rewrite under the title options, but this had no effect. For instance our name on Google appears as Man Van London all the time, despite any amendments we make it always has Man Van London at the start of the title. ( website: www.manvanlondon.co.uk) If Yoast is the best SEO plugin for wordpress, is there any solution to fix this issue? Or is anyone familiar with another plugin? Does anyone suggest to not use plugin's at all? Thank you for your time. Looking forward to your wisdom. Monica
Technical SEO | | monicapopa0 -
Can you recommend a Web Developer who specializes in SEO?
We are an e-commerce site, http://www.ccisolutions.com running on an obscure Web store coded for us by a small company called Assist, located in Utah. We believe we have numerous problems with our code that are negatively impacting our SEO. One such problem, the current meta refresh on our homepage, is in the process of being fixed (Thanks to Jenn Lopez at SEOMoz for helping me convince management it was important enough to pay the $ for the fix!). However, I believe there could be numerous other issues. I am the SEO strategist, but I am not a coder beyond basic HTML and CSS. Can anyone recommend a highly qualified Web developer who's strong in SEO that we might hire to do an audit of our code, including recommendations on how to fix anything that might be discovered as a problem?
Technical SEO | | danatanseo0 -
Country domain: Seo for other languages
Hi, I have an italian domain (.it) for an italian hotel, it is an old authoritative domain (1997) and it is well optimized for the keywords that include the city the hotel is in, now the page is decently positioned in Google Italy. There are many problems to have the same rank for German version (in google.de, google.at). The German version is in the /de folder. The hotel has another .com domain, much less authoritative (2007), in a German server, but it was and is only a simple redirect 301 (by code) to the German version in the .it domain. (obviously the rank for this domain is almost nonexistent). Do you have any suggestion? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | depi0 -
Seo template for new website
I am revamping my website (www.UltimateBasicTraining.com). It's going to be major and I am concerned about the potential traffic loss since over 60% of my overall traffic comes from organic search results in the military basic training area. Are there any good SEO website templates I can start from? I see a lot out there but would prefer the advice of professionals. Thanks
Technical SEO | | TheVolkinator0 -
Is there an onsite seo api?
Im trying to find an api which I can intergrate with my database for onsite keyword checking. Does anyone know if there is one available on the market? thanks, Chris
Technical SEO | | seomasters0 -
Best SEO strategy for a site that has been down
Because of hosting problems we're trying to work out, our domain was down all weekend, and we have lost all of our rankings. Doe anyone have any experience with this kind of thing in terms of how long it takes to figure out where you stand once you have the site back up? what the best SEO strategy is for immediately addressing this problem? Besides just plugging away at getting links like normal, is there anything specific we should do right away when the site goes back up? Resubmit a site map, etc? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | OneClickVentures0