undefined
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
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • 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
    • 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.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • 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. Html 5 main and secondary navigation for SEO best performances

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.

Html 5 main and secondary navigation for SEO best performances

Web Design
3
8
3.1k
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.
  • netbuilder
    netbuilder last edited by Sep 28, 2012, 4:29 AM

    I am building a website which will have a main navigation related to the site and each link of the main navigation will have a secondary navigation. We do not want to use a megamenu style navigation. I will try to explain it with a example:

    Let's start with an example for a computer store "My PC Store", the Main Navigation would be:

    Desktop PC's Notebook & Tablets
    Multimedia

    When clicking on the "Notebook & Tablets" the user is directed to the page domain.com/notebook-tablet.html and on this page the secondary navigation appears: Laptop Netbook Tablets / iPad I am confused on how I should organize the semantic navigation for best SEO performances and I need advice / suggestions. I thought about 2 different ways to do it but which one is more appropriate in terms of SEO? PROPOSITION A Home Page:

    <header>

    My PC Store <nav>

    • Desktop PC's
    • Notebook & Tablets
    • Multimedia </nav> </header>

    Sub-Page (Notebook & Tablets):

    <nav>(or

    <aside>?)

    • Desktop PC's
    • Notebook & Tablets
    • Multimedia </aside>

    </nav>

    <header>

    Notebook & Tablets <nav>

    • Laptop
    • Netbook
    • Tablets / iPad </nav> </header>

    As you notice on the home page the Main Site Navigation is included in the

    <header>while it is not in the sub-pages.

    PROPOSITION B

    Home Page:

    <header>

    My PC Store

    <nav>

    • Desktop PC's

    • Notebook & Tablets

    • Multimedia

    </nav>

    </header>

    Sub-Page (Notebook & Tablets):

    <header>

    Notebook & Tablets <nav>

    • Desktop PC's
    • Notebook & Tablets
    • Multimedia </nav> # Notebook & Tablets * Laptop
    • Netbook
    • Tablets / iPad </header>

    The main navgation remains always in the

    <header>(home page / sub-pages) of all page.

    I need suggestions... How would you guys organize the nav ?

    </header>

    </header>

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • MatthewBarby
      MatthewBarby @netbuilder last edited by Sep 28, 2012, 7:44 AM Sep 28, 2012, 7:44 AM

      Apologies, typed that up wrong. Have updated above post.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • netbuilder
        netbuilder @netbuilder last edited by Sep 28, 2012, 7:32 AM Sep 28, 2012, 7:32 AM

        Why are you inserting

        outside

        <header>?</header>

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • MatthewBarby
          MatthewBarby @netbuilder last edited by Sep 28, 2012, 7:43 AM Sep 28, 2012, 7:10 AM

          My apologies. I would go with the following example in order to maintain a good SEO with your webpage headers and also a solid navigation:

          Home page:

          <header>

          My PC Store

          <nav>

          • Desktop PC's

          • Notebook & Tablets

          • Multimedia

          </nav>

          </header>

          Sub Page:

          <header>

          <nav>

          Notebook & Tablets

          *** Desktop PC's**

          • Notebook & Tablets
            *** Multimedia**

          </nav>

          </header>

          **<nav>

          • Laptop
          • Netbook
          • Tablets / iPad </nav>**

          Hope this helps.

          Matt.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • netbuilder
            netbuilder @netbuilder last edited by Sep 28, 2012, 6:27 AM Sep 28, 2012, 6:27 AM

            OK but you don't answer to my question since we do not want any mega menu or drop down menu.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • MatthewBarby
              MatthewBarby @netbuilder last edited by Sep 28, 2012, 6:13 AM Sep 28, 2012, 6:13 AM

              This is true if it is wrapped within JavaScript, so that the search engines cannot read it. However, if you use two separate navigation menus then you can negate this problem.

              Also, if you were to code up the 'mega menu' style navigation with CSS3 then you could also avoid these crawling problems and make the navigation much more search-engine friendly.

              In general, I try to avoid using sub-pages within site to extend navigation (unless it is completely different product areas or business verticals).

              Matt.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • netbuilder
                netbuilder @MatthewBarby last edited by Sep 28, 2012, 5:43 AM Sep 28, 2012, 5:43 AM

                Well there are in general SEO concerns in the use of navigation Mega Menu style and this is why we want to avoid it.

                MatthewBarby netbuilder 5 Replies Last reply Sep 28, 2012, 7:44 AM Reply Quote 0
                • MatthewBarby
                  MatthewBarby last edited by Sep 28, 2012, 5:29 AM Sep 28, 2012, 5:29 AM

                  Hi There,

                  I think I have got the jist of what you're trying to achieve.

                  What I would recommend is that you have links to Desktop PC's, Notebook & Tablets, Multimedia, Laptop, Netbook, Tablets / iPad directly from your homepage. The reason being that this will allow the search engines to crawl your webpages easier and the subcategory pages won't be so deep within the domain.

                  What I mean is that I would use either a drop down list, so that when the Notebook & Tablets is hovered over, the subcategories are then displayed below it. Alternatively, you could have a secondory naviagtion on the homepage, i.e. with an extensive drop-down list lower down or at the side of the webpage.

                  Great examples of this type of navigation can be found on: http://www.ebuyer.com or http://www.musicmatters.co.uk/shop.html (look at the secondary nav on the right for the Music Matters shop page.

                  I hope this helps.

                  Matt.

                  netbuilder 1 Reply Last reply Sep 28, 2012, 5:43 AM Reply Quote 0
                  • 1 / 1
                  1 out of 8
                  • First post
                    1/8
                    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

                  • jcobo

                    Making html table as 'seofriendly' as possible

                    Hi, On my website I have a table with a list of products, on every row I have a different product and a different property on each column. The table is made with css so the html code is clean. The problem is (I guess) that google doesn't 'understand' what its inside on the table. So if I do a google search that page appears on the page 87, there is any way to improve my SEO without changing the table? Or to improve my SEO I must change the format of my content? In resume, I want to improve the SEO page of a page that contains information organized inside a table. I don't know if there is a specific answer to this question. Any help is welcome. Regards

                    Web Design | Apr 23, 2018, 3:42 AM | jcobo
                    0
                  • 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 | Nov 29, 2017, 4:12 PM | KendallHershey
                    0
                  • LauraFalls

                    Have an eBook. What is best practice for SEO?

                    Hello We have a free eBook - its a great resource and great piece of content. It is available to download on our website here - http://re-timer.com/the-product/how-to-sleep-better/ The book is available as a whole or as individual chapters (i.e. http://re-timer.com/app/uploads/2015/07/Chapter8.pdf?b0df38). The PDF chapters appear to be doing well in Google search for certain keywords. I can't measure this in GA though. I would like the eBook to assist the SEO of my website overall. If I create a web page and 'embedded' the PDF into it will Google still crawl this page? At the moment we are also using this to collect email addresses, this is a nice to have and it is OK if people get the eBook without doing this (if they find a chapter in Google they currently don't have to enter their email address). I'm sure lots of people have eBooks now. What is best practice and the best way to use this as a tool to maximise SEO for the whole website (http://re-timer.com)? Thank you! Laura

                    Web Design | Dec 10, 2015, 9:57 PM | LauraFalls
                    1
                  • Dino64

                    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.

                    Web Design | Sep 18, 2015, 4:31 PM | Dino64
                    0
                  • VirginiaC

                    SEO and Squarespace? Is this Really an Option?

                    Hi all, Any feedback on Squarespace, SEO capabilites and ranking factors? I have a client wishing to use the platform and despite the good reviews, which appear to be from resellers by the way, the forums say not. Although apparently Rand Fishkin, SEOMoz (yes right here!) gave them a big thumbs up “The square space team have put together a remarkable platform, SEO friendliness! Really not sure here and don’t agree, there are many limitations and hosting with a template provider is always big no no. Cheers
                    Virginia

                    Web Design | Feb 8, 2017, 8:39 AM | VirginiaC
                    0
                  • EcommerceSite

                    What is the best tool to view your page as Googlebot?

                    Our site was done with asp.net and a lot of scripting. I want to see what Google can see and what it can't. What is the best tool that duplicates Googlebot? I have found several but they seem old or inaccurate.

                    Web Design | Jan 12, 2017, 3:31 PM | EcommerceSite
                    0
                  • Jon-C

                    Left or right hand navigation

                    Really stupid question (I think) but does Left or right hand navigation help or hinder SEO and/or user experience? Re-doing our site at the moment and I quite like right hand navigation as it seems to highlight our content better but not sure if it would hinder anything SEO wise - site is based on a responsive theme and side navigation is only called after content anyway so don't think it would make a difference SEO wise Noticing more and more sites moving towards right hand nav and I quite like it, would also differentiate us in our niche as everyone else uses left hand nav As I say probably a stupid question but thought I would ask! 🙂

                    Web Design | Jan 29, 2013, 4:03 PM | Jon-C
                    0
                  • DWJames

                    Best method to stop crawler access to extra Nav Menu

                    Our shop site has a 3 tier drop down mega-menu so it's easy to find your way to anything from anywhere. It contains about 150 links and probably 300 words of text. We also have a more context-driven single layer of sub-category navigation as well as breadcrumbs on our category pages. You can get to every product and category page without using the drop down mega-menu. Although the mega-menu is a helpful tool for customers, it means that every single page in our shop has an extra 150 links on it that go to stuff that isn't necessarily related or relevant to the page content. This means that when viewed from the context of a crawler, rather than a nice tree like crawling structure, we've got more of an unstructured mesh where everything is linked to everything else. I'd like to hide the mega-menu links from being picked up by a crawler, but what's the best way to do this? I can add a nofollow to all mega-menu links, but are the links still registered as page content even if they're not followed? It's a lot of text if nothing else. Another possibility we're considering is to set the mega-menu to only populate with links when it's main button is hovered over. So it's not part of the initial page load content at all. Or we could use a crude yet effective system we have used for some other menus we have of base encoding the content inline so it's not readable by a spider. What would you do and why? Thanks, James

                    Web Design | Apr 20, 2012, 5:35 AM | DWJames
                    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.