Dropped rankings due to too many links, help needed
-
We have just re-designed our site and added a big drop-down navigation menu to help users get straight to the category/sub-category they are looking for, take a look at http://www.discountfiresupplies.co.uk to see what I mean. Since doing so our rankings have dropped which we've been told may be because there are now so many links on (particularly) the home page diluting the rankings of that page. We've been advised that if we hide the drop-down menus using "style='display: none'" until they are required that the search engines will ignore them which we have now done but is this correct or will they still be indexed? And if so do you have any other suggestions?
Thanks, Tariq
-
First of all, I like your new design, and typically, large sub-navs are excellent for usability and spidering. As Michael Martinez from seo-theory.com once eloquently put it: "[PageRank] was made to be wasted. Real SEOs understand that."
If you think of your homepage as a balloon and PageRank helium, then trying to capture as much PR as possible to increase rank seems logical. Unfortunately, that's not a correct analogy. If you've just re-designed your site, it's likely that there are new problems created you're unaware of. Or, also likely is that - depending on how new your site is - Google's system hasn't finished fully evaluating it. It's normal for a redesigned website to see some rank fluctuations over the course of several days (or even a week or two) while it is in various stages of being indexed in ranked.
Do not use ""style='display: none'" to hide links. This is cloaking in its most basic and easily detectable form, and whether you mean well or not, Google can't detect your intentions - so don't expect them to.
TL;DR I would recommend you re-evaluate the rest of your site first, your competitors, and link situation before worrying about too many links on your main nav bar as it's usually not the issue.
-
To use nofollow for pr sculpting is not anymore a valid tactic. As explained quite a long time ago (2009?) nofollow links are counted for the link equity distribution, with the only exception that the pr evaporates as it is not "assigned" to the page the no followed link refers to.
-
You also need long tail and branded links. Don't stop building links to justify the change. You should see a change back in the SERPs in about 3 weeks. I did the same thing.
-
You could just nofollow the links you don't want to lead to nonindexed sites. This way Google will stop there. Other than that editing your robots.txt to exclude what you don't want to show up would work.
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
-
Help With Duplicated Content
Hi Moz Community, I am having some issue's with duplicated content, i recently removed the .html from all of our links and moz has reported it as being duplicated. I have been reading up about Canonicalization and would to verify some details, when using the canonical tag would it be placed in the /mywebpage.html or /mywebpage file? I am having a hard time to sort this out so any help from you SEO experts would be great 🙂 I have also updated my htaccess file with the following Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | finelinewebsolutions0 -
Need help ranking my site
Hi, Can anyone help me out? I am trying to get this site ranked for "Villa General Belgrano". It was on the first page of Google and then it disappeared. Did I over optimize the anchor text? http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/anchors?site=www.lawebdelvalle.com.ar
On-Page Optimization | | Carla_Dawson0 -
I have two pages ranking for the same keyword.
The index page and the targeted landing page for that keyword. They have different content, title, meta but I am competing with myself for the main keyword in the industry. What is the best way to fix this? 301 the keyword page to the index page?
On-Page Optimization | | Aftermath_SEO0 -
Dropping the www
We are planning on changing our domain next week. Everything has been covered including google change of domain procedure and redirects etc. I plan on dropping the www during this move as it is redundant and dilutes the keyword density of the domain. What do you guys think of this? Is it worth doing? Thanks, Gareth
On-Page Optimization | | SimpsonGareth0 -
Why would my homepage be ranked lower (Page Rank 2) than my other pages on the site (PR3) ?
Why would my homepage be ranked lower (Page Rank 2) than my other pages on the site (PR3) ?
On-Page Optimization | | dmurtagh0 -
Footer link to home page?
Quick question - is it a best practice to add a footer link on each page of a website that points back to your home page, with the anchor text being your official brand name?
On-Page Optimization | | Bandicoot0 -
Should I include my help desk link?
My website has a link to our help desk. I was considering a 'do not follow' since I don't think it should be included. However, are there any benefits to including it since there are A LOT of articles and pages on our help desk (though it's aimed at our curent customers, not new or potential customers)?
On-Page Optimization | | flightoffice0 -
Do footer links apply too many on-page links?
We tend to put a a lot of links in the footers of some of our websites (e.g. www.AlohaWhistler.com). Our CAMPAIGNS report is showing that several pages on such sites have "too many on-page links". We understand the logic that having more than 100 links per page is "too much". Does this also apply to footer links?
On-Page Optimization | | RoyMcClean0