Drop Down Menus & SEO?
-
Do these typically have a negative impact on SEO? I know this is kind of a vague question, does it make it harder to spider? Are there SEO friendly ways of coding these? There are so many sites out there that have these, so I've got to assume it's different on a case by case basis.
-
Drop down menus do not typically effect SEO negatively. In fact a properly optimized drop down menu can be beneficial for letting Google know what your site and pages are for. Just a few things to check for:
1. Avoid Java script drop down menus - Use standard HTML or CSS driven drop downs instead.
2. Use live linked text and not images.
3. Use descriptive keyword in your drop down - For example a drop down for shirts use: Red shirt, Blue shirt, etc instead of just Red, Blue.....
4. Keep in mind the First Anchored text rule. Give seniority to your first anchored text link.
5. Make sure your links are absolute link. e.g.http://www.yourdomainname.com/services.htm
6. Use title attribute to describe the page the visitor will be taken to.
-
My developer has created a navigation that has all the links in the HTML, but sublinks are "display:none" until javascript tells it other wise. Does this a cause a problem?
-
It's hard to tell exactly what you mean by dropdown menus ... I am assuming you mean for navigation? It depends on if the dropdowns are formatted so that a spider can read them. You can right click on the page from a browser and then view the source code. You should see URLs for all the pages you link to. If so, you've got no problems! If not, then you should use a different method to navigate.
-
Just some more info:
we used "opencube" to make our menus. Fantastic software.
-
Just adding a few things to this posters questions.
I was always told that Java drop down menus were bad. I made sure my menus were html that could be seen in the code. I read recently that Google is getting better at reading java menus. I am not sure I believe this.
I have menus that open up into a tree structure; refining the search as you go. I find this to be good for the user experience as fewer clicks are required to get where you want to go. I am unsure of the seo downside to my menu structure as it means each of my pages have 170 links.
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
-
Non-wildcard SSL risky for SEO?
I have a potential client who doesn't seem to be using wildcard SSLs in a multi-site scenario (over 40 sites) - what I'm wondering is the scope of Google's inspection of a site's SSL in this case: https://www.domain.com (good to go) https://domain.com (certificate error) Will Googlebot/Google possibly consider the entire TLD insecure? Could the secured, www-version of the site end up with the "Site is not secure" message in the SERPs as well? Could this invisibly affect the client's rankings? PS: Yes, I know that the right thing to do is go wildcard, but I need an answer to this before recommending a large purchase to them.
Web Design | | scottclark0 -
From Google Sites to Wordpress - Anyone Ventured this SEO terrain?
We have a few sites in Google Sites - and they are ugly! We have a majority (40+) of websites in Wordpress. But we have a few websites just stuck on Google Sites, and since Google won't let you fully edit the HTML, add scripts, or implement any technology since 2000, we want to move. The sad problem - the Google sites are ranking well. We rank well in Manhattan, Atlanta, Dallas, and Philadelphia. The problem is - the sites do not give much room for growth - and the bounce rate is high because they are so ugly. Has Anyone moved from Google sites to Wordpress? Should we just stay with Google and bite the ugly bullet? My fear is that these sites will not allow for growth. It is hard to update them and even harder to make them look nice. To get a sample - beware: www.counselingphiladelphia.com Even another reason to leave: The slider is non-semantic and terrible SEO. Google won't allow a slider script with tags and a hrefs, so the only way to implement a slider is through a Google Docs Presentation that keeps sliding. I know - terrible SEO (#donthate) but we needed something. Any advice and thoughts would help! Thanks Mozzers!
Web Design | | _Thriveworks0 -
Changing design for a client. SEO concerns.
Hi there! A client requested me to change the look of his website entirely. It currently ranks #16 on Google with one of their main keywords. My problem is: The current site was made in a CMS I'm not familiar with and all of its pages urls are not SEO friendly (EX: http://www.mysite.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=95). It is the first time I have come up with this situation so I would appreciate any tips or links to useful information. I tried searching in SEOmoz and came up with nothing. I'm sure this is a common problem though. Since they want a static website, for starters their page extensions will change from .php to .html I'm not 100% sure but I think this will be a problem for their current ranking in Google. Any ideas? Edit: I forgot to mention that all of the backlinks this site has points to their hompage as www.mysite.com, I guess this is good.
Web Design | | Eblan0 -
$100 to who discovers why our rankings drop
I'm offering $100 to the SEO that pinpoints why our rankings dropped. Here's details: Some very good people have this site: nlpca(dot)com and it has dropped for many of it's keywords, including the keywords "NLP" "NLP Training" and many other keywords. We dropped from 19th to 42nd for the term "NLP". Here's what I'm doing about it: (1) making sure all of the keywords (on all pages) in the titles reflect what's in the content, and that the keywords show up exactly in the content 3 times or more. (2) making sure all of the keywords (on all pages) in the URLs reflect what's in the content, and that the keywords show up exactly in the content 3 times or more. (3) We're redoing the home page as (1) above. (4) We're fixing the 404s (5) We're shortening the titles that are too long, and we're thinking of reducing the home page keyword count to 3 keyword phrases, although 4 keywords work in all of our other sites that have the keywords showing up at least 3 times in the content. If it is something else, and you pinpoint it, and if because of you, we rise back up to around 19th (more or less) again then we'll give you $100 payable via paypal as a thank you. I'm going to leave this question 'unanswered' until this is resolved.
Web Design | | BobGW0 -
Do drop caps impact the search value of your content?
A client of mine wants to include drop caps at the start of the first paragraph on the page because they think it looks nice. I found some css techniques for implementing this using a span on the first character to enlarge the size of just that character. First word of the first paragraph. Are there any seo concerns I should have for adding drop caps?
Web Design | | fivelinesmedia0 -
Wordpress SEO Change of Structure
Hi, I have a Wordpress SEO Question. I ran the SEOMOZ checker on my website and it discovered roughly 70 of my 250 blogs had a URL length problem. I have removed the year and month from the WP structure as I read elsewhere that it is not important. The blogs displayed as follows: domain.com/blog/2011/02/contents-of-the-blog and the new structure is: domain.com/blog/contents-of-the-blog I have resubmitted the new structure to Google Webmaster Tools XML and updating the on-page sitemap on my main site. My blog was cached on 25<sup>th</sup> October and seems to be caching every 7 days, my website cached on the 24th and I wonder if I should do any follow up work to ensure the content gets crawled properly. a) Individually 301 redirect the old URLs to the new. b) Individual Canonical links for each. c) Adding the old pages to the robots file and disallowing. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | tdsnet0 -
Lazy Loading Content and SEO
I'v been seeing a lot of websites use a technique to present content to website visitors when the scroll down the page called "Lazy Loading". Does this hinder SEO and indexing since the content is not actually on the page until the user acts/requests it?
Web Design | | JusinDuff0 -
How to make AJAX/javascript website more seo friendly?
I have a website that is heavy on AJAX. I need recommendations on how to add content as well as other on page ompitizations. The website is a luxury brand for 6 resorts, each with their own subfolder. The website is http://me.graficode.com/preprod/.
Web Design | | Melia0