Are pages not included in navigation given less "weight"
-
Hi, we recently updated our website and our main navigation was dramatically slimmed down to just three pages and no drop down under those. Yet we have many more important pages, which are linked to once on one of those main three pages. However, will this hurt those other pages because they are not included in navigation (some of which were starting to get good traction in rankings)?
Thanks! -
I am confident that the pages in your persistent navigation are given more weight by Google.
On each of my sites I have a sidebar that presents a categorized list of links to the important pages that I want everyone to see. They could be there because I want them to be given attention by google, because I want them to have an opportunity to be seen by every visitor, because they are new and I want to promote them, or because they are important sales pages. The strategies and categories are different for every site.
If someone lands on your site and sees three links to other pages, what message does that send? Nuthin' here? If someone lands on your site and sees a great presentation of inviting topics, what message does that send. If you want people to see what you have, don't make them dig for it. If you have great content, get it out there and flaunt it.
Some of my good friends are designers who proselytize the concept of minimalist design. They think that I should have no more than three to five links on any page. They "tisk tisk" when they look at a site like mine. But, each of my sites has more traffic than all of theirs combined.
-
Great answer Dirk and I completely agree.
-
Hi,
2 things can have an impact on the underlying pages:
1. Your navigation is appearing on all pages - so the pages that are linked to from the navigation will get internal links from all the other pages of your site.
While internal links are less important than external ones, they still play a role in telling Google how important the pages are (=more links is more important). Removing important pages from the navigation will result in a (substantial) lower amount of internal links to these pages2. If the pages that were previously in the navigation are not linked to from the home page they will be 1 click further away from your homepage (same goes for the underlying pages). How deeper the content is in your site, the less likely it is that it will rank. This might have an impact as well.
So yes, it can have an impact. On the other hand - you also have to keep your visitors in mind. If you had one of these huge dropdown menus before with lots of different links, and now a very clean and logical navigation, it could have a positive impact on the user experience. This would be reflected by things like time on site, bounce rate,...etc and would have a positive effect on rankings.
Just my 2 cents,
Dirk
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
-
WordPress redirects are taking too long to navigate: Anyone ever faced this?
Hi community, We are using wordpress website. We have redirected hundreds of URLs from wordpress redirect manager for last 10 years around. Suddenly from last one week, the redirects are taking too long to navigate to the pages; like around 1 minute. Could you anybody face the same issue? Please help me on this. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Anything wrong in linking to homepage from all sub domain pages?
Hi, We have 6 sub domains which are forums, guides, etc. They have their own visitors for the related queries. We are planning to divert some of them to the website to promote our product with latest content. We are planning to add a link from every page of sub domain to our website homepage. This makes additional thousands of internal links flowing to website homepage. Will this kind of internal linking structure hurts? Any risks involved? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz1 -
Nesting <a>tag for rel="nofollow"</a>
I just wanted to quickly run this past someone. I have some footer links I want set to nofollow: <map <span="" class="webkit-html-tag">name</map>="Map"><area <span="" class="webkit-html-tag">shape="rect" coords="10,39,73,101" href="URL" target="_blank" alt="some text"> should this be <map <span class="webkit-html-tag">name</map <span>="Map"><area <span class="webkit-html-tag">shape</area <span>="rect" coords="10,39,73,101 <a <span class="webkit-html-tag">href="URL" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" alt="some text"></a <span> Want to check before I advise. If this is not the way how can I fix?
Web Design | | MickEdwards0 -
How do I optimize a site designed to be one scrolling page of content?
Our website uses section ID's as its navigation so all the content is on one page. When you click About Us, the page scrolls down to About Us. Products, the page scrolls to Products section, and etc. I am getting crawl errors for meta descriptions but will this go away once the main domain has this info? We just added the meta keywords and description to the header and since the navigation sections use the same page, I assume it will correct the errors. Any other advice on optimizing for site designs like ours would be great. www.theicecubekit.com is the site. Thanks,
Web Design | | bangbang
Chris0 -
Splash Pages For App Downlowds
Hi, We currently have a very simple splash page that Android and iPhone users see when they land on our homepage. The screen gives them the option to download our app or move on to the full website. If they choose to go to the site they are redirected to our homepage. Is this going to have any negative impacts on our rankings? I'm not sure how the Google bot treats this type of page. We have also talked about replacing the splash page with a modal window, but I'm concerned that this will increase the load time of the home page on mobile devices. Does anyone have any experience with a similar situation or any advice? Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | Cash4Books0 -
Anyone have a good example of a CSS-based multi-level nav bar that is semantic (including link level subordination) and is ux positive?
Anyone have a good example of CSS-based multi-level nav bar that is semantic (including link level subordination) and is ux positive? Or am I gonna have to actually make one? Anyone have a good example of CSS-based multi-level nav bar that is semantic (including link level subordination) and is ux positive? Or am I gonna have to actually make one?
Web Design | | anns0 -
Is it necessary to redirect every Error page (404 or 500) found?
If I have Hundreds of pages with 404 and 500 erros should set up 301 redirects for all of them? Some of the pages have external links, some don't.
Web Design | | jmansd0