How do I reduce internal links & cannibalisation from primiary navigation?
-
SEOmoz tools is reporting each page on our site containing in excess of 200 internal links mostly from our primary navigation menu which it says is too many.
This also causes cannibalization on the word towels which i would like to avoid if possible.
Is there a way to reduce the number of internal links whilst maintaining a good structure to allow link juice to filter through the site and also reduce cannibalization?
-
Hi Marcus.
That sounds like a good Strategy. I am going to look at different structure on our dev site and see what works best overall from both technical and more importantly the customers point of view.
I'll definitely have a look at he apps you mentioned. They seem really interesting.
Once again, many thanks for your advise. Really helpful indeed
Regards
Craig
-
Hey Fraser,
taking a quick look again, you have a three tier nav, so you could just simplify it so it is only a two tier nav.
So,
Bed & Bath
- Bath Linen
- Bedroom
Embroidery
- Towels
- Bathrobes
- Kids
- Sports & Spa
The others all seem to just be a single depth anyhow so this could make the main sections of the site easily navigational and you still have your sub navigation which you could then maybe highlight a lttle more in the design.
So, if someone clicked on Towels, we would have the highlighted section and sub nav but if we maybe boxed it and added a header of something like
Browse Towels - Hand Towels
- Bath Towels- etc
My advice would always be to try it, see if it works out for you and improves any metrics you are tracking. Maybe install something like Crazy Egg heatmaps or click tracking so you can see how people are using the current nav (if at all) vs the sub navigation.
Certainly, a sub navigation is a convention, amazon etc use it, so people are used to this way of browsing. Just make sure your design shines a light on what you want people to do and I don't see any usability issues.
Hope this helps!
Marcus -
Hi Marcus,
That's is correct for our site.
I had thought of this and agree its technically the easiest way to deal with this, however I wonder how problematic it would be for the customer if they were trying to navigate say from a product to another category completely, there would be no easy way to do this. I am not convinced that the customer would use the breadcrumb trail to do so.
Maybe there is a way of utilising the primary navigation but limiting the number links from it.
Thanks for your help.
Craig
-
Hey Fraser
Is this your site: www.towelsrus.co.uk?
If so, the simple answer here would be to lose your drop down menus and give that a go. You already have a sub menu on each page once the user clicks through and a breadcrumb so someone can easily anchor themselves within the site should they land on one of these pages.
You then have a sub navigation on the primary category pages that allows people to navigate down to the long tail sub category pages like this one: Egyptain Cotton Hooded Bathrobes - which I am sure does not need to be linked to from every single page.
That should be technically easy enough and will make for a better overall site structure which is still easily spiderable via the sub navs. Equally, the canibalisation is likely not as big an issue as it appears but you will be removing multiple instances of keywords from the nav so that's not going to hurt.
I would give this a read:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-many-links-is-too-manyHope that helps!
Marcus
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
-
Faceted Navigation & SEO
Hi Is my faceted navigation bad for SEO?! example: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/metal-cabinets-cupboards Thanks 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Did Google Ignore My Links?
Hello, I'm a little new to SEO, but I recently was featured (around 2 yrs ago) on some MAJOR tech blogs. For some reason however, my links aren't getting picked up for over 2 years - not even in MOZ, or other link checker services. - By now I should have had amazing boost from this natural building, but not sure what happened? This was completely white hat and natural links. The links were after the article was created though, would this effect things? - Please let me know if you have any advice! - Maybe I need to ping these some how or something? - Are these worthless? Thanks so much for your help! Here's some samples of the links that were naturally given to http://VaultFeed.com http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2013/09/13/microsoft-posts-cringe-worthy-windows-phone-video-ads-mocking-apple/ http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/15/4733176/microsoft-says-pulled-iphone-parody-ads-were-off-the-mark http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/16/microsoft_mocks_apple_in_vids_it_quickly_pulls/ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2420710/Microsoft-forced-delete-cringe-worthy-spoof-videos-mocking-new-range-iPhones.html And a LOT more... Not sure if these links will never be valid, or maybe I'm doing something completely wrong? - Is there any way for Google to recognize these now, and then they'll be seen by MOZ and other sites too? I've done a LOT of searching and there's no definitive advice I've seen for links that were added after the URL was first indexed by Google.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DByers0 -
Navigational Changes
Need some advice on when to use canonical vs. redirects for navigation changes to a website. However, if there are other options i am open to them as well. We are consolidating some navigational paths and moving others We are renaming product pages (therefore creating new product pages, CMS platform requirements) Keep in mind we have desktop domain and a mobile domain Questions Do we redirect old URL's to the new product page URL's? Do we redirect old mobile URL's to new mobile URL's or to the desktop equivalent? Do we redirect all old product page URL's containing navigation elements to the new product page URL? If we have a category page being added to two different sections how do we determine the right canonical URL? (the URL will be different because the customer paths will be different) Do we need to make sure and redirect all old URL's to a new URL? If so, what is the best way to find all of the URL's?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seo320 -
Can internal links from a blog harm the ranking of a page?
Here is the situation: A site was moved from its original domain to its new domain, and at the same time, the external wordpress.com blog was moved to a subdirectory, making it an onsite blog. The two pages that rank the highest on the site have virtually no links from the blog and no external links, while all the other pages are linked extensively from the blog and have backlinks. Their targeted keywords are not so much easier to rank than the other pages for that to be the sole cause. To confuse the matter even more, there was a manual penalty affecting incoming links which was removed last month. The old site, which has many backlinks to the new site, is still in Google's index. The old blog however, has been redirected page by page and is not in Google's index. Most of the blog posts are short 1-paragraph company updates and potentially considered low quality content because of that (?) The common denominator among the two highest ranked pages (I'm talking top 3 in SERP v. page 3 or 4) seems to be either the lack of external backlinks or the lack of internal links from the blog. Could there be an issue with the blog such that internal links from it are detrimental rather than helpful?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kimmiedawn0 -
Is this link being indexed?
link text Deadline: Monday, Sep 30, 2013 link text I appreciate the help guys!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jameswalkerson0 -
Any good link buying companies ( http://www.text-link-ads.com )
Hi guys I have been passed this website: http://www.text-link-ads.com Has anyone ever used text-links ads before?? Can anyone please show me the way and suggest any really good lin buying companies? I am really fiding it hard to find good places to place inbound links into our website.. Thanks Gareth
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GAZ090 -
Looking for a link builder
Hey guys I'm looking for a freelance link builder to work with my agency. Any suggestions would be great. Thanks Jaime
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | flemingsteele0 -
Link to domain
Let's say i want to rank for rental car service and purchases a domain rental-car-service and creates a site http://www.rental-car-service.com There will be few persons who won't use anchor text to link to the site, but will simply link using URL ( in this case http://www.rental-car-service.com ) So, will a link to http://www.rental-car-service.com from another site using http://www.rental-car-service.com as anchor text help the keyword rental car service ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoug_20050