Drop Down Menus & SEO?

[MichaelWeisbaum]

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.

[First]

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.

[MichaelWeisbaum]

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?

[AmericanOutlets]

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.

[EugeneF]

Just some more info:

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

[EugeneF]

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.