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
      • SEO Q&A
      • 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.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • 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. Implementing a new Nav Bar: Best practice, SEO benefit, your suggestions?

    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.

    Implementing a new Nav Bar: Best practice, SEO benefit, your suggestions?

    Web Design
    2
    3
    1307
    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.
    • Martin_S
      Martin_S last edited by

      Hi Mozland,

      We are going to have a new Nav Bar for our site built from the horror that we currently have to up with. We want to make it a simple affair, similar to The Guardian two-tier Nav Bar - main menu which will drop down to the 2nd tier according to what you clicked on in tier one. Regular stuff, I think.

      Any suggestions, from your experience, about how best to implement this, what to include, what not to do, what can be included and done to make it as best it can be to get people to peruse our site as easily as possible?

      Thanks

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Martin_S
        Martin_S @DougRoberts last edited by

        That's a great help. Thanks Doug for being so thorough.

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

          In my experience, especially if you've got a content rich site (and I'm assuming you do as you mention a two tier bar), getting the information architecture right first is absolutely essential You should be fitting the navigation around the content - not the other way round.

          I don't know if you're able to modify this architecture. If you can then you need to be a little bit cautious. Make sure that you test any changes with members of the target audience. Make sure that if there are any changes to URLs (renaming sections etc) then you create suitable redirects. Don't ignore testing your architecture!

          Make sure that the words used for each item provide the visitor with a clear understanding of what they're going to get if they click on the link. Don't use generic words/phrases like "articles"

          Can provide incentives/compelling reasons for people to want to explore sections on your site? This will depend on the nature of the site of course. Don't over-do it though.

          The entire Navbar should provide the visitor with a clear overview of the scope of the site. It's probably the first thing they'll see once they arrive and you want them to be able to quickly scan it and know that they're going to find what they're looking for. (Information scent)

          Make sure that the Nav bar clearly indicates the current page/section to help the visitor know exactly where he is.

          Use words on the menu bar that are going to be meaningful to visitors. Avoid jargon and acronyms. Try to take an external perspective. This is where keyword research can also help! The words you use should tie in to your keyword strategy and audience.

          Think about how your navigation can reflect your brand and credibility.

          What were the particular issues you face with the current navigation. Can you provide more specific detail, examples or the name of the site?

          What were the reasons for choosing a two-tier approach?

          Hope this helps!

          Martin_S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • 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

          • vetofunk

            Mega Menus and SEO

            Hi Everyone, I know this has been brought up before, but wanted your opinion for 2020. I have a new client that is hesitant to do a mega menu for their huge site due to the amount of links and "dilution". I have quite a few clients with mega menus with no problems at all from an SEO standpoint. But I can understand his perspective. I am suggesting that we have the main links (looking at GA) as the the navigation, then clicking them takes you to subcategory page listing all the subcats within. Problem is that the developer/designer has made this mega menu already and it is pretty slick. Now they already are killing it search-wise on Google, but don't have a mega menu or a secondary category page. Just a a category with too many products, so we are trying to go one way or the other. Any opinions on which route to best take from a user and SEO perspective?

            Web Design | | vetofunk
            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
          • STP_SEO

            Does too much inline CSS impact SEO rankings

            Hello, Does implementing a lot of inline CSS have a negative impact on SEO rankings? I imagine it could affect page speed, but any other issues I might run in to?

            Web Design | | STP_SEO
            1
          • Discountvc

            301 Redirect all pictures when moving to a new site?

            We have 30,000 pictures on our site. Moz will return 404's on some occasionally, but Google seems to ignore those. Should I 301 redirect all those images when we move to a new site lay-out? Appreciate your views!

            Web Design | | Discountvc
            0
          • Kingalan1

            Lots of Listing Pages with Thin Content on Real Estate Web Site-Best to Set them to No-Index?

            Greetings Moz Community: As a commercial real estate broker in Manhattan I run a web site with over 600 pages. Basically the pages are organized in the following categories: 1. Neighborhoods (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/neighborhoods/midtown-manhattan)  25 PAGES Low bounce rate 2. Types of Space (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/commercial-space/loft-space) 
            15 PAGES Low bounce rate. 3. Blog (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/how-long-does-leasing-process-take 
            30 PAGES Medium/high bounce rate 4. Services (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/brokerage-services/relocate-to-new-office-space)  High bounce rate
            3 PAGES 5. About Us (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/about-us/what-we-do
            4 PAGES High bounce rate 6. Listings (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/305-fifth-avenue-office-suite-1340sf)
            300 PAGES High bounce rate (65%), thin content 7. Buildings (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/928-broadway
            300 PAGES  Very high bounce rate (exceeding 75%) Most of the listing pages do not have more than 100 words.  My SEO firm is advising me to set them "No-Index, Follow". They believe the thin content could be hurting me. Is this an acceptable strategy? I am concerned that when Google detects 300 pages set to "No-Follow" they could interpret this as the site seeking to hide something and penalize us. Also, the building pages have a low click thru rate. Would it make sense to set them to "No-Follow" as well? Basically, would it increase authority in Google's eyes if we set pages that have thin content and/or low click thru rates to "No-Follow"? Any harm in doing this for about half the pages on the site? I might add that while I don't suffer from any manual penalty volume has gone down substantially in the last month. We upgraded the site in early June and somehow 175 pages were submitted to Google  that should not have been indexed. A removal request has been made for those pages. Prior to that we were hit by Panda in April 2012 with search volume dropping from about 7,000 per month to 3,000 per month. Volume had increased back to 4,500 by April this year only to start tanking again. It was down to 3,600 in June. About 30 toxic links were removed in late April and a disavow file was submitted with Google in late April for removal of links from 80 toxic domains. Thanks in advance for your responses!! Alan

            Web Design | | Kingalan1
            0
          • jmueller0823

            Multi-page articles, pagination, best practice...

            A couple months ago we mitigated a 12-year-old site -- about 2,000 pages -- to WordPress.
            The transition was smooth (301 redirects), we haven't lost much search juice. We have about 75 multi-page articles (posts); we're using a plugin (Organize Series) to manage the pagination. On the old site, all of the pages in the series had the same title. I've since heard this is not a good SEO practice (duplicate titles). The url's were the same too, with a 'number' (designating the page number) appended to the title text. Here's my question: 1. Is there a best practice for titles & url's of multi-page articles? Let's say we have an article named: 'This is an Article' ... What if I name the pages like this:
            -- This is an Article, Page 1
            -- This is an Article, Page 2
            -- This is an Article, Page 3 Is that a good idea? Or, should each page have a completely different title? Does it matter?
            ** I think for usability, the examples above are best; they give the reader context. What about url's ?  Are these a good idea? /this-is-an-article-01,  /this-is-an-article-02, and so on...
            Does it matter? 2. I've read that maybe multi-page articles are not such a good idea -- from usability and SEO standpoints. We tend to limit our articles to about 800 words per page.  So, is it better to publish 'long' articles instead of multi-page? Does it matter?  I think I'm seeing a trend on content sites toward long, one-page articles. 3. Any other gotchas we should be aware of, related to SEO/ multi-page? Long post... we've gone back-and-forth on this a couple times and need to get this settled.
            Thanks much! Jim

            Web Design | | jmueller0823
            0
          • Naghirniac

            Do you suggest a SEO Plug-in for Dreamweaver?

            I would like to know it there is any plug-in for Dreamweaver that helps our SEO work

            Web Design | | Naghirniac
            0
          • Red_Spot_Interactive

            Live Text in Navigation Vs. Image - Does this affect SEO

            I recently was asked the question if having live text in the navigation vs and image affect seo.  For example, refer to this link http://markup.io/v/avsaenq856kw the navigation highlighted is seperate images. The html elements read : ![](</span><strong style=)/images/procedures.png"> Live text html reads like this: Breast » What is better for seo value, or does it now matter having live text or an image?

            Web Design | | Red_Spot_Interactive
            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
          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.