Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Digital Marketing
    3. Web Design
    4. Drop Down Menus & SEO?

    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.

    Drop Down Menus & SEO?

    Web Design
    4
    6
    15092
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • MichaelWeisbaum
      MichaelWeisbaum last edited by

      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.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • First
        First last edited by

        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.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • MichaelWeisbaum
          MichaelWeisbaum @AmericanOutlets last edited by

          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?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • AmericanOutlets
            AmericanOutlets last edited by

            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.

            MichaelWeisbaum 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • EugeneF
              EugeneF last edited by

              Just some more info:

              we used "opencube" to make our menus.   Fantastic software.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • EugeneF
                EugeneF last edited by

                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.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • KendallHershey

                  How do elements that are displayed when scrolled impact SEO?

                  Hi, We are wanting to implement Animate.css and Wowjs on our site and were concerned about the SEO impacts. Basically when the page is loaded, if the element is not within the viewport then the HTML tag (i.e. div tag) have a style="visibility: hidden" and once the element is within the viewport it will change to have style="visibility: visible". Would having the style="visibility: hidden" negatively impact SEO?

                  Web Design | | KendallHershey
                  0
                • vtmoz

                  Does the blog widget with latest blog-posts at homepage helps in SEO?

                  Hi all, We are planning to add a widget at our website homepage which displays recent blog-posts with dates. Google favours new and latest content. So will these consistent new posts help in improving website ranking? Thanks

                  Web Design | | vtmoz
                  0
                • Joanne_Pendon

                  Website organic traffic unchanged, impressions took a 98% drop in the last week.

                  Hi all, I have a very curious predicament and I'd be grateful if someone could shed some light on the situation. As mentioned in the title, organic traffic to our website has remained unchanged, but organic impressions have taken a 98% drop in the last week. This happened suddenly over one day; on October 22, impressions were 700, on October 23, they were 500, and on October 24 they drastically dropped to 50. The next two days they were at 22 and then up to 35. Organic traffic, however, showed the normal "weekend drop" as of October 24, and is still showing normal level (even increased a bit) continuing into this week. These are organic impressions according to Google Analytics and Google Webmaster tools. We did perform a complete site redesign a month ago. Could this be an effect from the redesign? We also noticed drop in Domain Authority, but our competitors suffered a similar (if not greater) drop as well, so we wondered if it could be due in part to the algorithm update. If anyone could shed some light on the situation I would be so appreciative! Thanks!

                  Web Design | | Joanne_Pendon
                  0
                • DanielBernhardt

                  Will SASS ruin my SEO?

                  Hello, I am thinking about using SASS for my website, striping the current CSS style sheets and translating it all to SASS.. will this hurt my SEO?

                  Web Design | | DanielBernhardt
                  0
                • Ron10

                  What seo benefit does setting up a photo gallery where each photo is a separate web page?

                  what seo benefit does setting up a photo gallery where each photo is a separate web page?  My old SEO guy set up my photo gallery like that claiming that because each photo was a separate page, it added a big seo benefit and i never understood what he was talking about.  Maybe alt text on the photo with key phrases in it pointing to my other pages to give my site a theme for google?  I'm not really sure.   He has since moved away and i am considering redoing the photo gallery to multiple images on one page to be more user friendly to my users.  This photo gallery is 3 years old and the photos might have some page rank to them helping my site so i don't want to remove this gallery if there really is a benefit to it and it will hurt my site.  I once removed four static page rank 3 pages from my site that weren't used for my site anymore and my rankings dropped 5 positions.  Thoughts anyone? Thanks! Ron

                  Web Design | | Ron10
                  0
                • TomNYC

                  Can white text over images hurt your SEO?

                  Hi everyone, I run a travel website that has about 30 pre-search city landing pages. In a  redesign last year we added large "hero" images to the top of the page, and put our h1 headlines on top of them in white. The result is attractive, but I'm wondering if Google could be reading this page as "white text on white page", which is an obvious no-no, especially if it could seem that we're trying to hide text. Here's an example: http://www.eurocheapo.com/paris/ H1: Expert reviews of cheap hotels in Paris I should add that our SERPs for these city pages has dropped (for "Cheap hotels in X"), but it could obviously be related to other issues. Any advice would be appreciated. Many thanks! Tom

                  Web Design | | TomNYC
                  0
                • HMK-NL

                  Best layout pages for SEO

                  Dear all, what would be the ideal layout of a webpage for SEO? How would a homepage and landingspage look like? Thanks in advance! Best regards, Ben

                  Web Design | | HMK-NL
                  0
                • SoundinTheory

                  Combining web pages and it's affects on SEO?

                  We are looking into amending a website we are working on to try and combine 2 or 3 current pages onto one page. This site is similar to an estate agents site and currently has images, map, floor plan sub pages etc. Can anyone tell me, if we were to combine these pages and include the above details on one page, how that would affect the current search engine rankings?

                  Web Design | | SoundinTheory
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.