Putting nav code at the bottom of a page?
-
Hey,
We are doing a re-design on our websites and we have run into a little problem.
Basically we need to put the nav code at the bottom of the page (so when you view source all the nav code it at the bottom) but the nav will of course still show at the top.
Will this cause any issues with our SEO? Will it make the nav seem less important or get crawled less?
Thanks for the help in advance!
Ricky
-
I have placed the nav code at the bottom of the HTML doc at times. I can't really say that it is a significant difference for SEO. It doesn't take a lot of work to do if you are skilled with HTML/CSS but I can't really say that this methodology will have a long term benefit for SEO.
HTML 5 has new tags that sites should adopt such as
<nav>and other tags to indicate what that chunk of content is. These tags are supported by all major browsers at this point. I don't know all the specific browser versions. I would recommend this moving forward where possible. By using this tags the crawlers likely will not factor in position in the document to understand the importance of chunks of content.</nav>
-
I see the value of associating anchor text with content links rather than navigation, but I agree with EGOL more than Ryan on this one. What if users are viewing the site with CSS disabled? Maybe because it's easier to view with a screen reader for blind/partially sighted people - it's not very user-friendly having the main navigation links only at the bottom is it?
-
I think that google is smart enough to tell nav code from content.
Most people who do this are probably wasting their time.
I put the nav code at the top... it contains some of my most important links.
Think about it.... If you think that Google can't identify nav code then this is like putting the links to your most important category pages in the footer. Do you really want to do that?
-
Hi Ricky, how big is this site... I have done this 3 years ago on a site I manage of about 100 pages. It worked fine from the first day. My main drive for this though was: I had one horizontal nav on top with no value links which the client insisted in having plus the beefy left hand vertical nav with the right keywords in. In the code I displaced the top horizontal nav to the bottom as and kept the left hand side vertical navigation on the top (codewise). It works wonderfully and no issues with Google at all.
cheers
david
-
Placing the navigation code at the bottom of your HTML is preferable from a SEO perspective.
I have never heard of any system that "had" to place the nav code at the bottom. I've always had to specifically request the nav code be moved to the bottom of the page. I am curious. What software are you working with that requires the code placed at the bottom?
Presently crawlers read your site's HTML code from top to bottom. By placing your nav code at the bottom you can associate anchor text with your content links rather then your navigation links, which is generally preferable. This reasoning is why I position the nav code at the bottom of the html code.
In the future that may change with HTML and other semantic markup offering the ability for crawlers to easily identify content, but for now your approach is preferable in my experience.
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
-
Why are crawlers not picking up these pages?
Hi there, I've been asked to audit a new subdomain for a travel company. It's all a bit messy, so it's going to take some time to remedy. However, one thing I couldn't understand was the low number of pages appearing in certain crawlers. The subdomain has many pages. A homepage, category pages then product pages. Unfortunately, tools like Screaming Frog and xml-sitemaps.com are only picking up 19 pages and I can't figure out why. Google has so far indexed around 90 pages - this is by no means all of them, but that's probably because of the new domain and lack of sitemap etc. After looking at the crawl results, only the homepage and category (continent pages) are showing. So all the product pages are not. for example, tours.statravel.co.uk/trip/Amsterdam_Kings_Day_(Start_London_end_London)-COCCKDM11 is not appearing in the crawl results. After reviewing the source code, I can't see anything that would prevent this page being crawled. Am I missing something? At the moment, the crawl should be picking up around 400+ product pages, but it's not picking up any. Thanks
Technical SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Pages giving both 200 and 302 reponce codes?
We are having some issues with response codes on our product pages on our new site. It first came to my attention with the mozbot crawl which was picking up 1000s of 302 redirects, but when I checked them manually there was no redirect (and even the moz toobar was giving a 200 status) I then check with this tool http://tools.seobook.com/server-header-checker/?page=single&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.equipashop.ie%2Fshop-fittings-retail-equipment%2Fgridwall%2Fgridwall-shelves%2Fflat-gridwall-shelf.html&useragent=2&typeProtocol=11
Technical SEO | | PaddyDisplays
And its showing that there are 2 responses at 302 and a 200 ( but with the same bot under googlebot setting only shows the 200 status). I'm also getting no warning about it in WMTs Does anyone know what's happening here and how worried about it should I be as it seems goggle is using only the 200 status btw the developer thinks it something to do with how the browser is handling the canonicallink, but I'm not convinced Thanks0 -
From page 1th to page 18th @ Google
Hello Mozzers! I have a question, you may help.. How may it be possible that a page ranking well (1th result) goes from 1th result to the 18th page just in 1 day? It doesnt seem to be any kind of penalization.. I now had all suspicious outgoing links to be nofollow (they were not before), this may be a cause .. (?) Do you have any other suggestion? Thanks
Technical SEO | | socialengaged0 -
Killing Page Rank flow
Another SEO has told a friend to nofollow certain internal links i.e. to their own website. There are no hard feelings but this sounds like nonsense to me. Firstly, I'm sure Matt Cutts said that the link juice will not be redistributed amongst the other links (can't find the post - does anyone have the URL or confirmation?). Secondly (and this is obvious) those pages which have links to other pages in the website will have no link juice to pass back, resulting in a lower "total sum" and the inability for that PR to flow back. In short it seems silly. Any thoughts would be interesting to hear.
Technical SEO | | IPROdigital0 -
Multiple H1 tags on same page
Hi Mozers I have a doubt regarding H1 tags. I know H1 tags will not give some special SEO value. But is there any issue if we are using multiple H1 tags on a same page? For example on the seomoz.org blog home page I saw 16 H1 tags (seomoz.org/blog). Is that ok to use like that? Can I completely ignore all my worries about H1 tags?
Technical SEO | | riyas_heych0 -
How To SEO Mobile Pages?
hello, I have finally put my first foot on the path of trying to learn and understand mobile SEO. I have a few questions regarding mobile SEO and how it works, so please help me out. I use wordpress for my site, and there is a nifty plugin called WP touch http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wptouch/ What it basically does is, it converts your desktop version into a mobile friendly version. I wanted to know that if it does that, does this mean whatever SEO i do for my regular web site gets accomplished for my moible version as well? Another simple question is, if i search for the same term on my mobile phone then on my desktop how different will the SERs be? thanks moz peeps
Technical SEO | | david3050 -
PR of homepage when other pages have more lniks
This is going to sound like such a newbie question. I don't know how I've been doing SEO all this time and haven't come across the answer. It's usually true that a homepage will have the most backlinks, but what if it doesn't? What if an internal page has more links? Is it possible for an internal page to have a higher PR than a homepage? Additionally, if I do on-page SEO for many internal pages of my site, will it only help those particular pages or will it give the whole site a boost, thus making the homepage rank higher in the SERPS?
Technical SEO | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Is this 404 page indexed?
I have a URL that when searched for shows up in the Google index as the first result but does not have any title or description attached to it. When you click on the link it goes to a 404 page. Is it simply that Google is removing it from the index and is in some sort of transitional phase or could there be another reason.
Technical SEO | | bfinternet0