Ever Wise to Intentionally Use Javascript for Global Navigation?
-
I may be going against the grain here, but I'm going to throw this out there and I'm interested in hearing your feedback...
We are a fairly large online retailer (50k+ SKUs) where all of our category and subcategory pages show well over 100 links (just the refinement links on the left can quickly add up to 50+). What's worse is when you hover on our global navigation, you see the hover menu (bot sees them as
-
) of over 80 links.
Now I realize the good rule of thumb is not to exceed 100 links on a page (and if you did your math, you can see we already exceeded that well before we let the bots get to the good stuff we really wanted them to crawl in the first place).
So...
Is it wise to intentionally shield these global nav links from the bots by using javascript?
-
-
I had this same conversation with someone yesterday about a very similar set-up.
In a 2009 blog post, Matt Cutts said that the main reason not to include over 100 links was for user experience. It used to be for technical reasons, but those no longer apply. Here is the post: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-many-links-per-page/
Lots of links can lead to lots of code, which slows things down. It will also be dividing up the page rank fairly heavily. However in the age of mega-menus I don't think that the number of links is, in itself, a problem.
Just for reference (and the answers to your situation may be different) our conversation about this ended with the decision to reduce the number slightly - structuring to leak less page rank to unimportant pages. However overall we still have a LOT of links and are happy with that.
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
-
How to use Rich Snippets?
Hi there! I have been hearing a lot about Rich Snippets lately but I don't really know how they work. Are they a very important factor to consider for SEO? I would love to know your thoughts about this. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lucywrites0 -
Should we use a separate domain for franchise recruitment?
I represent a franchisor and we have two marketing campaigns: attracting customers to purchase our service; and attracting potential franchisees to purchase our business. We're torn between simply putting franchise-related content on our existing consumer website, or building a completely separate website for franchise recruitment. Building a completely separate site would involve a separate SEO strategy to build domain authority and backlinks... so we're thinking the better strategy would be to simply piggyback off of our already existing consumer website. Any advice?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kimberleymeloserpa0 -
Does Navigation Bar have an effect on the link juice and the number of internal links?
Hi Moz community, I am getting the "Avoid Too Many Internal Links" error from Moz for most of my pages and Google declared the max number as 100 internal links. However, most of my pages can't have internal links less than 100, since it is a commercial website and there are many categories that I have to show to my visitors by using the drop down navigation bar. Without counting the links in the navigation bar, the number of internal links is below 100. I am wondering if the navigation bar links affect the link juice and counted as internal links by Google. The Same question also applies to the links in the footer. Additionally, how about the products? I have hundreds of products in the category pages and even though I use pagination I still have many links in the category pages (probably more than 100 without even counting the navigation bar links). Does Google count the product links as internal links and how about the effect on the link juice? Here is the website if you want to take a look: http://www.goldstore.com.tr Thank you for your answers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onurcan-ikiz0 -
Can I use the old website content on the new website, after deleting it from the server?
My website nowwhatstudio.com hit by google pure spam and google applied manual spam action to the website. I create new website (nowwhatmoments.com) with the same content from the old spam action website (nowwhatstudio.com). As google removed my old website content from search indexed. Can I use the same content for a new website? If I delete my old website from the server, after that Can I use the old website content for a new website? Or Can make edits the old website content and make it 80% original for a new website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward0 -
How to track mentions with links using Mentions App
We have a large client that we've just taken on board for organic search marketing. A great client that continually gets links from the BBC, NY Times etc which actually takes care of having to do any marketing for them. However, they get 10-15 unlinked mentions per day. Just recently, they peaked at 32 mentions in one day from JUST websites. But I need a quick way to filter these out and check if there is a link pointing to their website. I want to be able to build up a list of opportunities without having to manually check each website. How do, Mozzlars!?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasondexter0 -
Can I use the same set of social media accounts on two sites?
I have a client who's company name / main site name is not his name. All his social accounts connected to his site are in his name. The site is verified with Google Places, etc. Now he asked for me to create a site for him in his own name with some similar info and a lot of new info. The million dollar question is do I use the same social media accounts on the new site? Facebook, twitter, youtube, etc? Will that hurt the organic rankings of the main site? I've seen this similar situation before. You may have someone who works at a large corporation who is mentioned on the main site has their own personal profile site just about them. Where they can go more in depth about things they are doing. If the other set of social account where in the company name it would be a no brainer to create new social accounts in his name. The issue is the main companies social accounts are already in his name.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | markpine3600 -
Excessive navigation links
I'm working on the code for a collaborative project that will eventually have hundreds of pages. The editor of this project wants all pages to be listed in the main navigation at the top of the site. There are four main dropdown (suckerfish-style) menus and these have nested sub- and sub-sub-menus. Putting aside the UI issues this creates, I'm concerned about how Google will find our content on the page. Right now, we now have over 120 links above the main content of the page and have plans to add more as time goes on (as new pages are created). Perhaps of note, these navigation elements are within an html5 <nav>element: <nav id="access" role="navigation"> Do you think that Google is savvy enough to overlook the "abundant" navigation links and focus on the content of the page below? Will the <nav>element help us get away with this navigation strategy? Or should I reel some of these navigation pages into categories? As you might surmise the site has a fairly flat structure, hence the lack of category pages.</nav> </nav> </nav>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | boxcarpress1 -
Using abbreviations in URL - Matching Keyword
We have a website that uses /us/, /ca/, /va/, etc for URLs of the different U.S. states. How much better is it (or is it at all better) to use /california/ or /virginia/ instead in our URLs to rank for searches that include the name of those states?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Heydarian0