Using Anchor Link in the Main Navigation
-
Has anyone ever used anchor links as a drop-down in a sub-collection from the main navigation and does it have any negative impact on link equity?
My client has large product collections and sub-collections, these are then separated into further subsections which are open within the same page (see attached). What I want to do ideally is in the main navigation feature 'Mad Hatter Costumes and Accessories'. This will obviously have a # in the URL though and I am was wondering if this might hurt the chance of the page ranking?
If anyone has any experience in this it would be really helpful!!
Thanks in advance
-
Not a problem
-
Agree with you on entirely on optimising for the conversion, which is why I was looking at this solution in the first place. It's a case of balancing between the UX and the ranking I suppose!
Thanks for your thoughts and help.
-
depends how many of these you're planning to have. In any case, the loss (which may occur) should be very fractional and not super damaging. If you lose 0.05% traffic but gain +2% conversion rate, then really you're winning overall. Sometimes good SEO involves making a decision that slightly hurts the 'purist' SEO, in order to focus on revenue and 'real business' KPIs (which matter more, which bosses care about more)
As long as you can reason the trade-off which you made and it falls in your favour (overall), then you have done a good job
Your bigger problem is that these new links may push other links further out of the user's reach and / or further down the code / page. If this happens, other links may not supply quite the same SEO authority which they did before
I certainly think your proposal is worth testing. Measure both the CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) and SEO impacts. If overall you take in more $, then the fact that SEO has a slightly bruised cheek is really just a matter of vanity. Think with your business head
-
Thanks for your response!
Do you think you would lose the equity from the link being in the main navigation though? In theory, it would still point at www.domain/subcollection but it would then also have a hashtag at the end of the URL as well and I don't know if that would impact my subcollection from ranking?
-
AFAIK this has no negative impact on SEO, but is symptomatic of another issue which does impact SEO. Putting too much stuff, or too much content on a single URL - thus 'diffusing' Google's ability to nail down 'the primary topic' of the URL (which can make it rank badly)
It's not the anchor links that cause the poor rankings though, it's the ill-thought out information architecture and site design (IMO)
Google won't rank those anchor URLs by the way. Just the main page. But it's not like you'll get some kind of crazy anchor using penalty or something, that doesn't exist
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
-
Better use Google Analytics? This is for Conversion Rate Optimization purposes
Hi Moz-ers, I've had much help from the Moz community and hoping you can help me out on this one too. I would like to track everyone who visits our town listing pages. We operate much like ratings and reviews websites like tripadvisor and booking.com. What is the best way to track visitors coming to our listings pages only (for example tripadvisor shows top 10 hotels in London.) I would like Google Analytics on London and all other towns including Birmingham, Southampton ect... Is it possible to set up Google analytics to track this? These are our highest volume pages so having an idea of the traffic behaviour is crucial for SEO and Conversion Rate Optimization. As usual, looking forward to the advice we receive! Thanks,
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Eric_S
Eric0 -
Use "Brand Name" or things like "Free Shipping" in Ecommerce Product Title Tags?
Given the current industry best practices and changes to Google algorithms, should I be using "Product name...Brand Name" or something like "Product Name...Free Shipping (or similar)" in my ecommerce title tags? Â Thanks!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | jeffbstratton0 -
Using my Adwords budget
Hi, I have a huge budget for adwords but I only seem to be using about 1/10 of it daily. How to I go about using more budget but also keeping my conversion costs and % around the same? And should each campaign have its own set of unique keywords? Should these keywords never appear in more than 1 campaign? Any tips on maximising budget and increasing conversions would be great. Thanks
Conversion Rate Optimization | | YNWA1 -
Which eCommerce site you consider using best practices? Site we can learn from
Hi, I'm looking to hear thoughts and suggestions as per sites that you consider to have great practices in the eCommerce world. Almost none of the sites do everything good so you can split your suggestions by any criteria -
Conversion Rate Optimization | | BeytzNet
the site structure
conversion funnel
Converting product pages (good design)
content creation and blog management / structure
content marketing
SEO guidelines / practices
... Thanks0 -
How to make use of those traffics on non-conversion page?
I am working on a website which sells eBooks softwares, most of posts on the site are teaching people how to solve eBook-reading problems and will lead visitors to download and try the software. But some posts are not related to the software, we just write it for traffic, for example: link-bait post such as top xxx romantic eBooks, free eBooks tools review, etc. These posts have got a pretty considerable traffic, but visitors just come here, read, like/share/comment, then leave. Is there any way I can make use of these pages to convert? Thanks
Conversion Rate Optimization | | JonnyGreenwood0 -
Can using the Google Keywords tool and/or SEOmoz cause problems for my company's IP address?
I just started with a company a few weeks back, working on-site doing SEO work. I've been using SEOmoz as well as Google Adwords' Keywords tool. I just got a message from one of our reps saying that people at the office (and this is a huge office) have reported tons of CAPTCHAs being thrown up frequently. I told them I had been running searches with Google Keywords tool and SEOmoz, but would that really cause that much of a problem? Is there anything I can do in order to fix this, some keyword finders that won't get me in trouble, etc.?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | SmokewagonKen0 -
What's the most effective web marketing tactic you've seen or used that very few people know about?
I wanted to start a thread to share some of the really cool marketing tactics I've seen on the web that I think few folks are using, AND ask the community here what you've seen, too! Some of my favorite undiscovered or less-used tactics include: Making smart use of bios for conferences, events, interviews, etc. where folks ask you or your team members for a "bio" and you get to control the links, link targets, and anchor text. This is super powerful in my experience, so long as you have a moderately strong profile or regular participation in this type of stuff. Price anchoring on conversion pages, e.g. http://www.trackur.com/options - note how they start with the highest price to help "anchor" the audience to bigger numbers. A great principle of psychology in action. Using re-marketing to draw people to content rather than just purchase/conversion pages. The effectiveness of these is, I've heard, dramatically higher than the usual re-marketing campaigns that take you to a squeeze or purchase page. I can't share the example I'm thinking of, unfortunately, but I'd urge you to try it! Get more social shares and clicks by SHARING MORE THAN ONCE! A lot of folks feel like they are burdening their audience on Twitter/Facebook/G+ or frustrating them if they post multiple times, when in fact, very, very few of your followers are online at any given time. I've tested this myself and I get almost no negative feedback but can triple or more the number of shares/+1s/likes/visits/etc I get just by sharing 2-3X! The key is not to be too repetitive or annoying, and to acknowledge past shares (at least for me). e.g. I'll say "my blog post from last night on XYZ" and get a ton more clicks. What are your favorites? Please share!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | randfish16 -
Google Plus account - Should I use Brand or Product Type
Hi Let's assume that our company's name is "Smith Computers" and we specialize in Ultrabooks (for those who don't know - super light and slim computers - a niche within computers for the matter). Under which name would you open the Plus account - Smith Computers Ultrabooks Smith Ultrabooks Smith Ultrabooks Computers The example is not 100% but the question remains - No one knows Smith Computers and even if we turn up in search results for computers, the customers are not looking for our type products.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | BeytzNet
However, it is our brand name! Ultrabooks - I assume it will help us gain followers faster but will be hard to brand. The followers will be people who like the product and not the company but might be good people to sell to in the future. I'd say that option 3 is half branding and option 4 is 75% branding 🙂
Both will also have good chances to pop up in search results. The company at hand is a family owned business. We do not plan to rule the industry but rather taking it to the next level. We do not count on having thousands of people searching Google for "Smith Computers" like Best Buy etc. Please consider that at the end we want to use it both for promoting our brand (slowly) but also (and maybe mainly)Â SEO (by getting more people that click +1 onsite). We currently have lots of Facebook followers but naturally they only Like and not +1 Please help...0