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. SEO Tactics
  3. On-Page Optimization
  4. Is a Mega Menu with over 300 links in it hurting my rankings?

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.

Is a Mega Menu with over 300 links in it hurting my rankings?

On-Page Optimization
3
10
3.8k
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.
  • sparrowdog
    sparrowdog last edited by Jun 1, 2014, 7:18 AM

    I got hit pretty badly by Panda 4.0 (1/3 of my traffic lost), and I'm fairly certain it was because Google had potentially indexed over 20 million pages from a site filtering piece of software and got done for duplicate content. I have since fixed that using URL Parameters and that 20 million is down to 2.7 million now and I have submitted a clean site map, so now I wait.

    I have just done a site relaunch and am trying to determine if there are any other issues. I run an online store, and I have a mega menu with well over 300 links in it - makes the user experience really quick and easy to jump exactly where you want - and then I have about 30 links in the footer.

    I know there's a 'no more than 100 links on a page' guideline for Moz, but does anyone know if Google is smart enough to see the same header / footer navigation structure on every page of a site and know it's navigation and not water down the rest of the links, or do I need to re-think and simplify my navigation?

    It's one of those things that's there for a user experience and now I'm worried that I'm being penalised.

    The site is www dot shopnaturally dot com dot au

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • sparrowdog
      sparrowdog @JaneCopland last edited by Jun 7, 2014, 12:58 AM Jun 7, 2014, 12:58 AM

      Much appreciated. Thank you.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • JaneCopland
        JaneCopland @sparrowdog last edited by Jun 7, 2014, 12:57 AM Jun 6, 2014, 8:41 AM

        Hi Joanne,

        Sorry for not totally expanding on what I meant as the outcome using javascript! Yes, you're "hiding" portions of the mega menu. There is speculation that search engines might execute JS commands to find out if there is content behind them, but at the moment this still seems a valid way to "remove" links from Google's total link count. Keep and eye on whether this changes though (and acknowledge that it might not be totally reliable, even now).

        Perhaps check out this tutorial for JS menus: http://www.siteground.com/tutorials/menu/javascript.htm

        Cheers,

        Jane

        sparrowdog 1 Reply Last reply Jun 7, 2014, 12:58 AM Reply Quote 1
        • sparrowdog
          sparrowdog @JaneCopland last edited by Jun 6, 2014, 1:25 AM Jun 6, 2014, 1:25 AM

          HI Jane, further to the comment about M&S and Debenhams, I now understand what you mean by using a JS-powered navigation. While we can see it as users, the search engines can't see the endless links in the mega menu.

          While having a phone consult with an SEO person today, he mentioned the same thing, using AJAX to hide that kind of information from Google so the users still get the experience of the content but Google isn't reading endless pieces of information it doesn't need.

          I am a web developer, but not a high level programmer. Could you point me in the direction of where I should look as far as tutorials go so I can implement this in my site?

          The links in the mega menu that I'll want to hide with AJAX are all readily available on main category pages and in breadcrumbs.

          JaneCopland 1 Reply Last reply Jun 6, 2014, 8:41 AM Reply Quote 0
          • JaneCopland
            JaneCopland @sparrowdog last edited by Jun 3, 2014, 9:33 AM Jun 3, 2014, 9:33 AM

            Yep, I would guess that your Panda issue was far more likely to have been the URLs than the menu - that's pretty standard Panda fare so that's great that you've sorted that out.

            I am leaning towards really doubting that the menu is hurting you at all, but of course experimenting with removing non-essential menu items is possible. It's hard to draw real conclusions from the results you see after you modify something like a menu because other factors will influence rankings during that time, e.g. you gain or lose links, Google changes its treatment of unrelated metrics, your competitors gain or lose links, etc.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • sparrowdog
              sparrowdog last edited by Jun 3, 2014, 9:26 AM Jun 3, 2014, 9:26 AM

              Thanks again. I've just noticed our rankings climb for a few phrases & keywords purely by doing internal keyword linking and writing quality blog posts.  I'm sitting on the fence as to whether to ditch my mega menu or at least greatly simplify it. It provides ease of use for the end user to jump straight to the category they want, but if I'm losing traffic, then they're not on the site to use it.

              Catch 22.

              I've been watching a pile of Matt Cutts videos but haven't found one on this particular topic yet. I'm pretty sure my Panda issue was cough 20 million pages listed in URL Parameters from a poorly set up internal refine search feature that's been given the flick. We're down to 2.6 mil now and some of my rankings are slightly improving already.

              JaneCopland 1 Reply Last reply Jun 3, 2014, 9:33 AM Reply Quote 0
              • JaneCopland
                JaneCopland @sparrowdog last edited by Jun 3, 2014, 9:20 AM Jun 3, 2014, 9:20 AM

                I'm assuming these internal keyword links are a lot more effective if they're only competing against 100 links instead of 400+

                In theory, kind of - one link out of 100 that uses the anchor text "natural skin care" will receive a higher percentage of the available passable PageRank than one link out of 400 using the same anchor text. The link from a page with just 99 other links should not be seen as any more relevant for the phrase "natural skin care" than the link from the 400-link page though. But it should receive more of a boost for that keyphrase than if it had to share the passable authority with three times the number of targets.

                I am making an assumption here, so if anyone else knows that relevancy in internal anchor text goes up along with the division of passable PageRank, please chime in!

                Google doesn't have the same reverence for anchor text that it had a few years ago, but most of its efforts in not relying so much on anchor text have been focused on inbound links from other websites, rather than internal links.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • sparrowdog
                  sparrowdog last edited by Jun 3, 2014, 9:10 AM Jun 3, 2014, 9:10 AM

                  Fabulous answer Jane. Thank you so much 🙂

                  I think the thing I'm concerned about now is how well my internal keyword linking is going to work with 300+ links on each page. We're going to the trouble of rewriting a lot of content and doing some very specific internal keyword linking to help people move around the shop better and also for SEO purposes.

                  I'm assuming these internal keyword links are a lot more effective if they're only competing against 100 links instead of 400+ ?

                  JaneCopland 1 Reply Last reply Jun 3, 2014, 9:20 AM Reply Quote 0
                  • JaneCopland
                    JaneCopland last edited by Jun 3, 2014, 9:08 AM Jun 3, 2014, 9:05 AM

                    Hi Joanne,

                    The "fewer than 100 links" quote is a little bit outdated in terms of what Google can actually handle. This article from late last year makes clear that the limit is long gone. The guideline is an okay benchmark when it comes to ensuring that you aren't overloading a page with useless or irrelevant content and links, but it's definitely not a requirement for crawling / indexing / ranking success anymore.

                    Your drop-down looks pretty standard to me. Some sites choose to present menus like this using JavaScript to call lower-level URLs (e.g. Hair, Face & Body + Natural Skin Care might be links in the HTML but then a JS call is required to bring up Certified Organic Skin Care, Cleansers, etc. - Google and other search engines do not traditionally execute JavaScript and thus won't see the links) but this is an increasingly unnecessary tactic, and could be detrimental if those URLs are not linked to in a crawlable manner elsewhere within the website.

                    Having a lot of links on a page has one "detriment" - a page does not "leak" PageRank / authority if it links out a lot, but it does mean that less PageRank passes through each link if there are hundreds of links, as opposed to 50 or 100 links. The total amount of PR that can be passed on is divided amongst more links. Again, it's important that links to all your pages be crawled so that those pages are indexed and receive authority, so I don't think you have to worry about this.

                    Further example: http://www.marksandspencer.com/ uses a JS-powered navigation, http://www.debenhams.com/ does not.

                    sparrowdog 1 Reply Last reply Jun 6, 2014, 1:25 AM Reply Quote 1
                    • DJ123
                      DJ123 last edited by Jun 1, 2014, 5:13 PM Jun 1, 2014, 5:13 PM

                      Nice website.

                      I would spend much more time getting quality, pertinent backlinks for your site from creating good content pieces which people want to share/link to.

                      Do you use canonical urls throughout the site?

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • 1 / 1
                      1 out of 10
                      • First post
                        1/10
                        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

                      • PostAlmostAnything

                        Are Wildcard Subdomain Hurting my SEO?

                        I have some sites with a lot of categories (category, sub-category, sub-subcategory) and locations (country, state/territory, city). To avoid listing pages really deep in my hierarchy I used wildcard subdomains for the locations, but lately I have been told that might be hurting my overall SEO efforts. I have a lot of URLs like https://city-state-country.example.com on one side of the domain and example.com/category/subcategory/subsubcategory on the other. In the middle you see stuff like city-state-country.example.com/category/subcategory/subsubcategory and everything in between. Would I be better off moving the locations to the right side of the domain name? Then you might find stuff like example.com/country/state/city/category/subcategory/subsubcategory and everything in between. I think I could do the new rewrite rules fairly easily since every country slug is just two characters long.

                        On-Page Optimization | Jun 16, 2021, 8:26 PM | PostAlmostAnything
                        0
                      • cradut

                        To NoFollow or to NoIndex internal links

                        I all, I have recently taken over a fairly large e-commerce site that I am trying to "fix" and have come across something that I need a second opinion on. A Semrush audit has revealed that there are a heck of a lot of internal nofollow links (over 90 000) that point to predominantly 4 pages from the Header of each page in the site, these are change currency pages to show clients different currencies and a members login page. The pages are: /?action=changecurrency¤cy=EUR /?action=changecurrency¤cy=USD /?action=changecurrency¤cy=GBP /members/ My opinion is that these pages should just be no index pages and they should be followed. instead of being indexed and no followed? Any thoughts on this out there?

                        On-Page Optimization | Nov 7, 2016, 1:36 PM | cradut
                        0
                      • doctecs

                        Link flow for multiple links to same URL

                        Hi there,
                        my question is as follows: How does Google handle link flow if two links in a given page point to the same URL? (do they flow link individually or not?) This seems to be a newbie question, but actually it seems that there is little evidence and even also little consensus in the SEO community about this detail. Answers should include source Information about the current state of art at Google is preferable The question is not about anchor text, general best practises for linking, "PageRank is dead" etc. We do know that the "historical" PageRank was implemented (a long time ago) without special handling for multiple links, as e.g. last stated by Matt Cutts in this video: http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718 On the other hand, many people from the SEO community say that only the first link counts. But so far I could not find any data to back this up, which is quite surprising.

                        On-Page Optimization | Mar 31, 2016, 6:06 AM | doctecs
                        0
                      • Lorne_Marr

                        Removing navigation menu items/links on homepage

                        We are redesigning our website after a long stint with an SEO firm who also handled our design/dev. We want to clean up the links on our homepage but don't want to screw up our IA or SEO. We want to delete some navbar menu items and a whole bunch on random links to our evergreen content below the fold. Would we need to reposition those navbar items/content links to our footer or somewhere else on the homepage to maintain our internal linking structure? It would be great if you could take a look at our site and give us any suggestions or advice on the best way to go about this. Thanks!

                        On-Page Optimization | Jan 13, 2015, 3:22 PM | Lorne_Marr
                        1
                      • jampaper

                        Title Tags: Does having the singular and plural version of the keyword hurt the ranking?

                        I'm wondering if there is a duplication issue with having a singular AND plural version of a keyword in the Title Tag. For example: Wood Desk - Wood Desks| Furniture Store Would this help or hurt my ranking for this URL? I can’t find a concrete answer for this under Moz’s “Title Tag SEO Best Practices Page.” Thanks for your help!

                        On-Page Optimization | Jan 25, 2013, 9:11 AM | jampaper
                        0
                      • BistosAmerica

                        Wordpress category links not working

                        Hi All of sudden, my category links are not working. Any tips on figuring out what's causing this? Looks like permalink problem with newer wordpress version. I turned off all the plugins see if this cause any problems.  Still not being able to find any option. Here's my site http://www.hibebefetaldoppler.com/fetal-doppler-questions-and-answers/ Thanks in advance

                        On-Page Optimization | Aug 6, 2012, 11:18 AM | BistosAmerica
                        0
                      • JohnTulley

                        Do we have too many links in our footer?

                        Hi guys, we have 41 links on our holiday(vacation) rental website, this seems too many when looking at best practice. 24 of these are links to community pages while 8 link to activities pages. The community and activity pages are also accessible from links on the top menu so they are not strictly necessary but do get 10% of site clickthroughs according to Google in-page analytics. I therefore do not want to remove the links if there is no good evidence that google will penalize us for this. What do you think would be best for our site? Thanks, John Tulley. footer.jpg

                        On-Page Optimization | Jul 27, 2012, 1:58 PM | JohnTulley
                        0
                      • SewFabulous

                        Can search engines find the text in a drop down menu? Is it better to have more links or a drop down menu?

                        Can search engines find the text in a drop down menu?

                        On-Page Optimization | Jun 1, 2011, 7:34 AM | SewFabulous
                        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.