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.
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)?
Thanks! -
I am confident that the pages in your persistent navigation are given more weight by Google.
On each of my sites I have a sidebar that presents a categorized list of links to the important pages that I want everyone to see. They could be there because I want them to be given attention by google, because I want them to have an opportunity to be seen by every visitor, because they are new and I want to promote them, or because they are important sales pages. The strategies and categories are different for every site.
If someone lands on your site and sees three links to other pages, what message does that send? Nuthin' here? If someone lands on your site and sees a great presentation of inviting topics, what message does that send. If you want people to see what you have, don't make them dig for it. If you have great content, get it out there and flaunt it.
Some of my good friends are designers who proselytize the concept of minimalist design. They think that I should have no more than three to five links on any page. They "tisk tisk" when they look at a site like mine. But, each of my sites has more traffic than all of theirs combined.
-
Great answer Dirk and I completely agree.
-
Hi,
2 things can have an impact on the underlying pages:
1. Your navigation is appearing on all pages - so the pages that are linked to from the navigation will get internal links from all the other pages of your site.
While internal links are less important than external ones, they still play a role in telling Google how important the pages are (=more links is more important). Removing important pages from the navigation will result in a (substantial) lower amount of internal links to these pages2. If the pages that were previously in the navigation are not linked to from the home page they will be 1 click further away from your homepage (same goes for the underlying pages). How deeper the content is in your site, the less likely it is that it will rank. This might have an impact as well.
So yes, it can have an impact. On the other hand - you also have to keep your visitors in mind. If you had one of these huge dropdown menus before with lots of different links, and now a very clean and logical navigation, it could have a positive impact on the user experience. This would be reflected by things like time on site, bounce rate,...etc and would have a positive effect on rankings.
Just my 2 cents,
Dirk
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
-
Incorporating Spanish Page/Site
We bought an exact match domain (in Spanish) to incorporate with regular website for a particular keyword. This is our first attempt at this, and while we do have Spanish speaking staff that will translate/create a nice, quality page, we're not going to redo everything in Spanish page. Any advice on how to implement this? Do I need to create a whole other website in Spanish? Will that be duplicate content if I do? Can I just set it up to show the first page in Spanish, but if they click on anything else it redirects to our site? I'm pretty clueless on this, so if anything I've suggested is off-the-wall or a violation, I'm really just spit-balling, trying to figure out how to implement this. Thanks, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Body of text on category pages
Hello everyone, wonder if I can pick your brains about our company's website. We are a tea company - Canton Tea Co. We have been advised that it is really important to get more text onto the category pages on our website, as otherwise the page just consists of a list of products, and therefore provides Google with a ton of headers, tiny descriptions, and not enough text to allow the page to being easily indexed, therefore hurting our Google ranking for key search terms like 'Green Tea' which should lead to the Green Tea category page. So we decided to add some text to the category page. The only place for this text to go was laid over the category header image. However, it looks pretty awful and unsophisticated having this text on top of the image - please see an example, our Green Tea category page, via this link: http://www.cantonteaco.com/loose-leaf-tea-1/type/green-tea.html So I have three questions: How significant is the text on a category page such as this to that page's Google ranking? If we moved the text to an area that was hidden until clicked on, for example the 'Filter by' section that opens up when you click on it (see via URL above), would that negate the SEO benefit? Do you have any other ideas or opinions on how to resolve this? Thank you! Louise, Canton Tea Co.
Web Design | | Cantonteaco0 -
Should i not use hyphens in web page titles? Google Penalty for hyphens?
all the page titles in my site have hyphens between the words like this: http://texas.com/texas-plumbers.html I have seen tests where hyphenated domain names ranked lower than non hyphenated domain names. Does this mean my pages are being penalized for hyphens or is this only in the domain that it is penalized? If I create new pages should I not use hyphens in the page titles when there are two or more words in the title? If I changed all my page titles to eliminate the hyphens, I would lose all my rankings correct? My site is 12 years old and if I changed all these titles I'm guessing that each page would be thrown in the google sandbox for several months, is this true? Thanks mozzers!
Web Design | | Ron100 -
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 -
Do pull quotes affect SEO positively or negatively?
I like the design element of a pull quote to ad interest and highlight an important point. If I use an exact quote from the page in a pull quote on that page, does that negatively affect SEO as duplicate content? Are there formatting or tagging methods that could help pull quotes to boost SEO? For clarity, by "pull quote" I mean a stylized bit of text that floats on a page in such a way that the body text wraps around it. It is actual text (not text embedded in a graphic) but it behaves like an image with text wrapping around it. Here's an example (in red on the right side): http://www.21ct.com/resources/news-room/21ct-announces-its-latest-us-patent-for-advancing-big-data-security/
Web Design | | kyle21ct0 -
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 | | EcommerceSite0 -
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 -
Mobile Site Pages: Word Count Help
Hi there I am doing a mobile website for a client and they asked me what the dieal word count would be per page. They are SEO conciosu but we are not doing SEO on this site. I would just like to know a general rule of thumb. Regards Stef
Web Design | | stefanok0