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!
-
If it's a Portfolio of your Works - use the Left hand Navigation Menu ! Very Attractive.
The Clients will be amazed by the work you did there and published !If you have a blog or magazine webdesign go with the right hand side ! - as Takeshi said
-
From a web design & usability, a lot of people use right side navigation because it is close to the scroll bar on most browsers/computers. So people can easily access the scroll bar and use the navigation without having to drag their cursor all the way across the screen.
As far as SEO, Google will generally filter out boilerplate content like navigation, but if you have a lot of dynamic content in there, it can impact SEO as far as where you have the navigation in the code (above the content or below the content). However, regardless of where you place the sidebar in your code, you can have it appear wherever you want using CSS.
-
Hi,
It is true,right or left the only impact in your SEO could be if it gives a bad user experience and increases the bounce rate. Maybe choose wisely the links in the nav bar so they are not to many and they actually point to webpages you want to get link juice to.In theory when someone looks at a website tends to check more the left side, specially top left. check for website heat map on google.
What needs to be more visible, the navigation bar or the content? ... depends.
I don´t think that the great majority of customers will even realize that other pages in the niche have the sidebar on the other side. That is just because you are highly involved with your website and the niche and therefore even realize that.
In other words just a mater of design.
My personal opinion, I like right side navigation, looks more modern.
Sebastian
-
There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers.
Certainly don't see either having any negative SEO correlation (unless one looked particularly ugly and increased bounce/exit rates substantially).
I'm with Istvan in thinking it should be a user experience consideration.
-
Hi Teddi,
I personally like the idea of having the navigation on the right side, but we usually test it for each client. Questioning your visitors with a feedback will even give you a better overview of how they like it.
That would be my personal approach for it, but I hope it helps.
Istvan
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 optimise non-homepage to beat homepage in rankings? Are we on right path?
Hi all, We have a page with "keyword" in slug like "website.com/keyword" where our homepage is "website.com". This "keyword" difficulty is very high, so every minor factor contributing here and we have noticed competitors' pages with "keyword" in URL ranking. Then we also planned to rank this page "website.com/keyword" and interlinked high, so it'll be favoured by Google which didn't happen. So may be we should reduce the interlinking to homepage and optimise this keyword page more to rank for this keyword. Still I doubt the chances of ranking this page is difficult and need much more. How to make this page ranked replacing homepage? If there are no options for this, we are planning to redirect our homepage to this page; so Google will slowly adopt it. Suggestions please. Thank you.
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Are pages not included in navigation given less "weight"
Hi, we recently updated our website and our main navigation was dramatically slimmed down to just three pages and no drop down under those. Yet we have many more important pages, which are linked to once on one of those main three pages. However, will this hurt those other pages because they are not included in navigation (some of which were starting to get good traction in rankings)?
Web Design | | LuaMarketing2
Thanks!0 -
Does having a Blog link in the top level navigation provide any better SEO value, or would having it in a footer or top navigation work just as good?
Trying to decide on whether placing a link to the blog in our top level navigation would have a better SEO value than just placing it in top or footer navigation. I have an ecommerce site.
Web Design | | RPD0 -
Schema.org - Right way to mark the pages
Dear all, Almost since we started designing our site, we are using schema microdata. It is not only because of the rich snippets, but because I want the search engines to better understand what we have. For example, the +1 buttom would not work properly without schema microdata, because it kind of ignores the OpenGraph parameters that specified image and description; and since we are a (very small) local bussiness directory (between other things), all our clients have a hand written schema complient description on their lisings, including address, opening ours, telephone number, description, etc. It is hand written by us because the tools avialable are simply not good enough to cover all different scenarios that a listing can present. I have not use, until today, a proper for the homepage, and it is probably the cause that our page lost the nice links below the site description in the google snippet. I did not place it on the body tag, but near the description, closing it inmediately after the description finishs. Now this is solved and we will wait to see if the links come back in the next weeks. Now to the question. Our site has three sections, with three different systems installed, two running wordpress and a third running another script. the main site is the local bussiness directory. The front page is mark as "schema.org/WepPage", and I do not know how to mark the other pages of the main site. I was thinking of marking the listings as "schema.org/ItemPage" since they are related to specific clients. Would you consired it to be right? Then, we have landing pages for the categories, should they be mark as WepPage, or as an Article, or something else? Many thanks in advance for your help, Best Regards, Daniel
Web Design | | te_c0 -
CSS vs Javascript vs JQuery drop down navigation
For a user / seo perspective, what is the best way to code a drop down menu nav bar? Is it best to use css, javascript or a scripting library like jquery? I am thinking about overall best practice that will not have a negative impact on serps. I am also thinking about what will work best on all types of devices i.e. desk tops, lap tops, smart phones and tablets. What are the Pro's & Cons of Using CSS for Drop Down Menus. What are the Pro's & cons of using Javascript for drop down menus. And the same question for jquery. Thank you all in advance for your ideas.
Web Design | | bronxpad0 -
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_Interactive0 -
Negative Margins - Image Navigation
I created a good navigation but can't replicate it with html or css so I might have to stick to images. What would you recommend as a best practice for images in navigation? This site doesn't need to rank really high, it's mostly for a portfolio.
Web Design | | BeTheBoss0 -
How WP Themes work with Navigation Structure for SEO and JQuery Headers?
I am trying to find the best WP Theme for our company. I noticed most of them do not offer a left hand side navigation on the home pages, and usually are on the right side on the inside pages. I always thought that Home Page links were very important for SEO. Currenly we have a left drop down navigation with all of our product catagories, keyword optimized. The structure follows for all the pages. Is this not as important to Search Engines anymore? Is it better to have a products link, to all the products and then the inside pages, have just a navigation bar, for that particular catagory? This seems to be very common on all the templates i am seeing. I also noticed, and really like the JQueary Tabs. I would use this for displaying, PDFs and Specifications Charts. Also, some home page images are using a jquery slider with some text, linking to a page. Is Jquery the new javascript and do search engines see what is in the code? I also noticed they all have footers that have links and some other information. Is this a SEO must have?
Web Design | | hfranz0