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.
SEO and Main Navigation Best Practices
-
I've read a number of articles on SEO and main navigation for websites.
I'd like to get a solid answer/recommendation to help solve this one. This is the situation.
We're helping a local business that offers pest control and property maintenance services. Under each of these, there area a number of services available, eg, cockroach control, termite inspections or lawn mowing services, rubbish removal and so on.
Is it best to have a main nav containing the top keywords for the services - Pest Control | Property Maintenance, with a drop down to the services under each. Or, a simple approach - Our Services > drop down to each - Pest Control > Termite Inspections, etc. My concern here is that they have quite a lot of services, so the nav could be way too long.
Really appreciate any assistance here. Many thanks.
-
Thanks for this.
Great idea. I always have my Wife take a look. Will extend that to the teenagers and my parents. That will tell a lot.
Great tip! Cheers.
-
Another good way to test, grab your family, kids, friends etc..
Tell them to goto your site and find something, then ask them how easy was it and find out what wasn't easy an adjust.
Do this with at least 5+ people and you can have some actionable insight on what to alter.
-
Hi,
Thanks so much. It can be become a little too much as services are added, particularly in pest control, you could have dozens there.
I have actually created what you've suggested in the main nav but, will move the others over to the top service page as you say.
Really appreciate your help, thanks again.
-
Hi Richard!
We work with a lot of home service (HVAC, pest control, landscaping) companies and from our experience we've found that (like Tymen mentioned) dropdowns are ok as long as you don't make them keep dropping out further and further. It also depends on the amount of services you are trying to fit in the navigation.
Majority of our clients' websites' top level navigation would have - About | Landscape Maintenance | Landscape Design/Build | Portfolio | Contact - or something about those lines. Under "Landscape Maintenance" we might include Lawn Mowing, Irrigation Services, etc., in the drop down, but instead of continuing to add to the drop down, we would only link the top priority services from the drop down and list additional services with internal links from the main Landscape Maintenance page.
On our HVAC clients we might have "Heating" listed at the top most link in the navigation that has a drop down to Furnaces and Heat Pumps, and then we would include another drop down that includes links to the Installation, Maintenance, and Repair pages for both these services. I would only recommend doing double drop downs if your navigation doesn't include many services. For instance, if you have a bunch of services listed under Heating that ALL have an additional drop down, it could negatively impact user experience.
We try to pair down the main navigation to be as simple, but helpful/effective as possible, and include links to additional (less prominent) services from other landing pages instead of trying to jam pack everything in the top level navigation.
I hope this helps you figure out how to pair down the services!
-
Thanks Tymen,
Yes, drop downs are not the best solutions these days.
Will take a look at the site and see what we can do.
Thanks!
-
Hi Richard,
I would completely stay away from drop downs. You often get problems with different browsers and mobile. For main navigation you could go for: Home> What we Do> Who we are> Contact. Next to that I would work with a sidemenu or footermenu in which you have all the services. For example you could take a look at www.aliexpress.com. This way the visitor can navigate easily and all the serbices are visible on the homepage for visitors and Google.
Good luck! Tymen
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
-
International SEO - How do I show correct SERP results in the UK and US?
Hi, Moz community. I hope you’re all OK and keeping busy during this difficult period. I have a few questions about international SEO, specifically when it comes to ranking pages in the UK and the US simultaneously. We currently have 2 websites set-up which are aimed towards their respective countries. We have a ‘.com’ and a ‘.com/us’. If anybody could help with the issues below, I would be very grateful. Thank you all. Issues When looking in US Google search with a VPN, the title tag for our UK page appears in the SERP e.g. I will see: UK [Product Name] | [Brand] When checking the Google cache, the UK page version also appears This can cause a problem especially when I am creating title tags and meta descriptions that are unique from the UK versions However, when clicking through from the SERP link to the actual page, the US page appears as it should do. I find this very bizarre that it seems to show you the US page when you click through, but you see the UK version in the SERP when looking in the overall search results. Current Set-Up Our UK and US page content is often very similar across our “.com” and “.com/us” websites and our US pages are canonicalised to their UK page versions to remove potential penalisation We have also added herflang to our UK and US pages Query How do I show our US SERP as opposed to the UK version in US Google search? My Theories/ Answers US page versions have to be completely unique with content related to US search intent and be indexed separately - therefore no longer canonicalised to UK version Ensure hreflang is enabled to point Google to correct local page versions Ensure local backlinks point to localised pages If anyone can help, it will be much appreciated. Many thanks all.
Local Website Optimization | | Katarina-Borovska0 -
Best Practices: Different Phone Numbers on the Same Website
Since 2006 www.nyc-officespace-leader.com has promoted my commercial real estate brokerage business. I have been the sole broker listed on the site. As a result, the same phone number has appeared consistently throughout the site. Now I will be adding a colleague to the site (in addition to me) and I am struggling with how to best display my colleague's phone number. The 2nd broker will be adding property listings and blog posts. It was agreed that my phone number would be replaced by my colleagues phone number on his listings and blog posts. Pages that existed before would remain with my phone number. The idea being that leads generated by the 2nd broker's new content get directed to him rather than me. My concern is that having a new phone number listed will introduce an inconsistent phone number and harm our local SEO. I have read that it is absolutely critical that NAP (name, address, phone number) must be 100% consistent otherwise it can cause harm search engine ranking. What are best practices for displaying different phone numbers for different personnel on the same website without harming local SEO efforts? This situation is certainly common, so I would think there must be some work arounds. I have seen "Contact" icons that when clicked show phone numbers. Is there any standard solution for this issue that keeps NAP data consistent? Also, what if we keep the same number in the header but use different numbers in other locations? Is the header a location where we should be extra careful to display the same phone number? Thanks,
Local Website Optimization | | Kingalan1
Alan Rosinsky
Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc. An example of inconsistent listing pages are: -http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/386-w-38th-street-office-lease-2370sf
(Broker "#2) -http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/329-545-eighth-ave-office-lease-525sf
(myself) An example of inconsistent blog pages are: -http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/the-tech-explosion-impact-on-chelsea-2
(Broker "#2) -http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/office-space-build-out-cost
(myself)0 -
Using geolocation for dynamic content - what's the best practice for SEO?
Hello We sell a product globally but I want to use different keywords to describe the product based on location. For this example let’s say in USA the product is a "bathrobe" and in Canada it’s a "housecoat" (same product, just different name). What this means… I want to show "bathrobe" content in USA (lots of global searches) and "housecoat" in Canada (less searches). I know I can show the content using a geolocation plugin (also found a caching plugin which will get around the issue of people seeing cached versions), using JavaScript or html5. I want a solution which enables someone in Canada searching for "bathrobe" to be able to find our site through Google search though too. I want to rank for "bathrobe" in BOTH USA and Canada. I have read articles which say Google can read the dynamic content in JavaScript, as well as the geolocation plugin. However the plugins suggest Google crawls the content based on location too. I don’t know about JavaScript. Another option is having two separate pages (one for “bathrobe” and one for “housecoat”) and using geolocation for the main menu (if they find the other page i.e. bathrobe page through a Canadian search, they will still see it though). This may have an SEO impact splitting the traffic though. Any suggestions or recommendations on what to do?? What do other websites do? I’m a bit stuck. Thank you so much! Laura Ps. I don’t think we have enough traffic to add subdomains or subdirectories.
Local Website Optimization | | LauraFalls0 -
Local SEO - Adding the location to the URL
Hi there, My client has a product URL: www.company.com/product. They are only serving one state in the US. The existing URL is ranking in a position between 8-15 at the moment for local searches. Would it be interesting to add the location to the URL in order to get a higher position or is it dangerous as we have our rankings at the moment. Is it really giving you an advantage that is worth the risk? Thank you for your opinions!
Local Website Optimization | | WeAreDigital_BE
Sander0 -
Subdomain for ticketing of a client website (how to solve SEO problems caused by the subdomain/domain relationship)
We have a client in need of a ticketing solution for their domain (let's call it www.domain.com) which is on Wordpress - as is our custom ticket solution. However, we want to have full control of the ticketing, since we manage it for them - so we do not want to build it inside their original Wordpress install. Our proposed solution is to build it on tickets.domain.com. This will exist only for selling and issuing the tickets. The question is, is there a way to do this without damaging their bounce rate and SEO scores?
Local Website Optimization | | Adam_RushHour_Marketing
Since customers will come to www.domain.com, then click the ticketing tab and land on tickets.domain.com, Google will see this as a bounce. In reality, customers will not notice the difference as we will clone the look and feel of domain.com Should we perhaps have the canonical URL of tickets.domain.com point to www.domain.com? And also, can we install Webmaster Tools for tickets.domain.com and set the preferred domain as www.domain.com? Are these possible solutions to the problem, or not - and if not, does anyone else have a viable solution? Thank you so much for the help.0 -
Local SEO: City & County Pages
I'm working on developing some local pages for an HVAC company. They cover two counties, so I was planning on having two county pages, then linking them to individual city pages to keep the menu simpler and not cluttering it up with a couple dozen city pages for people to slog through. Has anybody ever done county pages before for local SEO? Or at least seen them? Just curious to see if there's any real benefit overall for have separate county pages, or if I should just stick to city pages.
Local Website Optimization | | ChaseMG0 -
Subdomain versus Subfolder for Local SEO
Hello Moz World, I'm wanting to know the best practices for utilizing a subdomain versus a subfolder for multi location businesses, i.e. miami.example.com vs. example.com/miami; I would think that that utilizing the subdomain would make more sense for a national organization with many differing locations, while a subfolder would make more sense for a smaller more nearby locations. I wanted to know if anyone has any a/b examples or when it should go one way or another? Thank you, Kristin Miller
Local Website Optimization | | Red_Spot_Interactive0 -
International Site Geolocation Redirection (best way to redirect and allow Google bots to index sites)
I have a client that has an international website. The website currently has IP detection and redirects you to the subdomain for your country. They have currently only launched the Australian website and are not yet open to the rest of the world: https://au.domain.com/ Google is not indexing the Australian website or pages, instead I believe that the bots are being blocked by the IP redirection every time they try to visit one of the Australian pages. Therefore only the US 'coming soon' page is being properly indexed. So, I would like to know the best way to place a geolocation redirection without creating a splash page to select location? User friendliness is most important (so we don't want cookies etc). I have seen this great Whiteboard Friday video on Where to Host and How to Target, which makes sense, but what it doesn't tell me is exactly the best method for redirection except at about 10:20 where it tells me what I'm doing is incorrect. I have also read a number of other posts on IP redirection, but none tell me the best method, and some are a little different examples... I need for US visitors to see the US coming soon page and for Google to index the Australian website. I have seen a lot about JS redirects, IP redirects and .htaccess redirects, but unfortunately my technical knowledge of how these affect Google's bots doesn't really help. Appreciate your answers. Cheers, Lincoln
Local Website Optimization | | LincolnSmith0