Internal Linking: What is the best practice for pages not included in Nav bar?
-
I never quite understood why internal linking was such a big deal for SEO, but now I'm having second thoughts and perhaps understanding it more.
I always thought since most websites have a navigation feature--usually the menu bar located at the top and often another one in the footer--that internal navigation was usually already built in to most websites and therefore, a silly topic to make a fuss over; however, I may be the silly one after all. I am now creating pages that are not included in the navigation so....
What is the best practice for this? If I am creating say, pages for certain locations and those location pages begin to number in the hundreds, it makes my navigation bar a little too cumbersome to have all those pages in a drop down menu. So I made a Locations page and just link to all those pages from that page (and from nowhere else). But now I'm wondering if this could be a bad internal linking practice and perhaps hurt my online visibility as an SEO ranking factor.
Is this a crawl problem? And if so, is there a better option that provides a good visitor experience while appeasing the search engines.
-
You certainly don't need to include every page of your website in your top navigation menu. Your plan of having a Locations page that then links to each of your location pages individually is a fine way to go.
That said, the deeper into your site architecture your page is, the fewer ways there are for people and search engines alike to discover it - to your point, there is now only one page on your site linking to all of these location pages. One reason internal linking outside the navigation is important is that it provides additional ways for users and search engines to browse to your content. I would recommend taking a look at the pages on your site and thinking about what pages a user might want to visit next, and linking to those. Providing an intuitive next step for your users keeps them engaged, and provides additional ways for your content to get discovered.
-
Hi there.
Actually, your plan is very good. That's actually what Matt Cutts recommends in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcSsMbFSGyc&t=160. I think we can trust his word
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
-
Does adding new pages, new slugs, new URLS in a site affects rankings and visibility?
hi reader, i have decided to add new pages to my site. if i add new urls, i feel like i have to submit the sitemap again. my question is, does submitting sitemap again with new slugs or urls affects visibility is serps, if yes, how do i minimize the impact?
Web Design | | SIMON-CULL0 -
We added hundreds of pages to our website & restructured the layout to include 3 additional locations within the sub-pages, same brand/domain name. How long could Google take to crawl/index the new pages and rank the keywords used within those pages?
We added hundreds of pages to our website & restructured the layout to include 3 additional locations within the sub-pages, same brand/domain name. The 3 locations old domains were redirected to their sites within our main brand domain. How long could Google take to crawl/index the new pages and rank the keywords used within those pages? And possibly increase our domain authority hopefully? We didn't want our brand spread out over multiple websites/domains on the internet. This also allowed for more content to be written on pages, per each of our locations service's, as well.
Web Design | | BurgSimpson0 -
Side bar menu, good or bad idea.
Hi everyone, I have a little problem. Not that long ago I launched my new site. Everything seems ok, but I'm not sure if it was clever idea to have additional side bar menu option. I wanted relevant content to be accessible very easy without dropdown in main menu. It looks ok on desktop, but we have a problem with mobile devices. Even main menu is a bit confusing and sidebar at the moment is at the bottom of each page. When I placed it on top of the page, we had problem with tablet users as it is showing side menu with blank page and content is almost below the fold. I have a tool installed called usability tools and it shows how visitors are using my site. The hard bit is that nobody on mobile devices are using sidebar and that means people visit one page and leave without exploring any additional resources. Me and my developer are discussing that maybe we should have two main menu bars instead of sidebar, but I have no idea how this looks in real life. What is the best practises for sidebar menus these days? Maybe we have a designer here who can help me with this and do some work? My site is https://a-fotografy.co.uk/ Thank you for all help in input in advance. Regards, Armands
Web Design | | A_Fotografy0 -
Fixing my sites problem with duplicate page content
My site has a problem with duplicate page content. SEO MOZ is telling me 725 pages worth. I have looked a lot into the 301 Re direct and the Rel=canonical Tag and I have a few questions: First of all, I'm not sure which on I should use in this case. I have read that the 301 Redirect is the most popular path to take. If I take this path do I need to go in and change the URL of each of these pages or does it automatically change with in the redirect when I plug in the old URL and the new one? Also, do I need to just go to each page that SEO MOZ is telling me is a duplicate and make a redirect of that page? One thing that I am very confused about is the fact that some of these duplicates listed out are actually different pages on my site. So does this just mean the URL's are too similar to each other, and there fore need the redirect to fix them? Then on the other hand I have a log in page that says it has 50 duplicates. Would this be a case in which I would use the Canonical Tag and would put it into each duplicate so that the SE knew to go to the original file? Sorry for all of the questions in this. Thank you for any responses.
Web Design | | JoshMaxAmps0 -
Best way to handle Spanish/English WEBSITE
Hey guys, How are you doing? I have a website (www.aceromart.com ) in which the primary language is Spanish. The company is oriented toward the Mexican Audience. However, recently we are dealing with many U.S companies. Also, we want to be included in the Yahoo Directory and several other directories which demand a U.S version of the website. So i want to have a U.S version of the website. My ecommerce is based in the NETWORK Solutions platform and has around 1,000 products and pages. What is the best way to include an English version of the website. Ive seen some pages using the Google traslate tool, which only traslates the text. Hope to hear some of your ideas, Regards,
Web Design | | JesusD0 -
Does DNS location affect international SEO?
Hi All Smart SEOmozers! I have another dumb question =] I have almost no knowledge on how DNS works and all the website background work. I understand that DNS is the server that translates a domain name to the IP address. Furthermore, I also know that IP Address location or web host location plays a small factor in international SEO. Webhosts usually provide the DNS service as well but for this case ABC Company uses a different domain service, diferent DNS service and different webhost service so things get complicated. So the question, does the location of DNS service we use affect International SEO like how the location of the webhost does. Thank you in advance for your help!
Web Design | | TommyTan0 -
What's the best way to structure original vs aggregated content
We're working on a news site that has a mix of news wires such as Reuters and original opinion articles. Currently the site is setup with /world /sports etc categories with the news wire content. Now we want to add the original opinion content. Would it be better to start a new top /Opinion category and then have sub-categories for each Opinion/world, Opinion/sports subject? Or would it be better to simply add an opinion sub-category under the existing news categories, ie /world/opinion? I know Google requests that original content be in a separate directory to be considered for inclusion in Google news. Which would be better for that? Regarding link building, if the opinion sub-categories were under the top news categories, would the link juice be passed more directly than if we had a separate Opinion top category?
Web Design | | ScottDavis0 -
Best Wordpress Hosting
I've had a horrible experience with the security on wordpress hosting with GoDaddy. Someone recommended Blue Host as my next option. Does anyone have any experience with BlueHost and what other hosting companies would you recommend for wordpress hosting?
Web Design | | ChristineCadena0