My company's website is undergoing site redesign and one of the things we are redoing is the sidebar navigation. Will increasing the amount of links hurt our page rankings for the site? We're going from about 40 links of only major pages to 257 links in a collapsible menu. The sidebar is also under the content in the code. Are there any other SEO impacts we should consider? +1 - me too! Quote: Originally Posted by air-conditioner-guy My company's website is undergoing site redesign and one of the things we are redoing is the sidebar navigation. Will increasing the amount of links hurt our page rankings for the site? We're going from about 40 links of only major pages to 257 links in a collapsible menu. The sidebar is also under the content in the code. Are there any other SEO impacts we should consider? I think, you first need to design your site for us, visitors? Can I easily and with convenience access all those 257 links? Am I going to benefit from visiting all those pages, and what should I do there.
Think of your customer first, I would suggest. It's a PR4 e-commerce site. The previous sidebar is pyramidal style navigation. For example AC, Fan, Heater, etc. Clicking those navigation link would take you to a category page with a break down (Ex. AC-size, AC price, AC-Brand, etc.)
For the new site design we were considering a collapsed menu style. Clicking a navigation bar would instead expand a menu with the sub-menus displayed (and not change the page you are on) till you click a link. That adds all the sub-menu links to every page. Would this new mass of links hurt the overall PR of the site? It's well over the 100 link informal rule from matt cutts. But I think it's more user friendly. You can browse the different categories without having to switch pages. Are you going to have massive content to counter act the number of links on each page? It won't hurt your site... for a few reasons. 1) you are PR4 and could be considered an authority site already, which gives your site an advantage and 2) interlinking your own content is not considered full outbound links and will just appear normal to search engines.
Your would be doing yourself a favor by interlinking like this. I have done SEO for many ecommerce sites and they just don't get penalized for interlinking. Quote: Originally Posted by moneylizard It won't hurt your site... for a few reasons. 1) you are PR4 and could be considered an authority site already, which gives your site an advantage and 2) interlinking your own content is not considered full outbound links and will just appear normal to search engines.
Your would be doing yourself a favor by interlinking like this. I have done SEO for many ecommerce sites and they just don't get penalized for interlinking. when you redesign your site you should redesign your site with seo and user friendly navigations...
1.) you should create your site pages within two clicks from your homepage
2.) use breadcrumbs navigation links or bottom internal links.. it would not hurt your website page ranking, but it would be quite weird that you increase so many links at one time. So don't do that so quicly. Any OBL (out bound link) will hurt your pagerank, not traffic. If the more links you have the less rank juice the page will consume. It all depends on if you really want the links there and you think its worth it.
But yes every link direct toward a site not on your domain will hurt your rank. So it seems like it won't hurt to have so many links on all pages. None of them are outbound links to other domains it's all internal site navigation. Also the content is already there. It was just accessed previously though a middle "category breakdown" page. The amount of clicks a user would need to access the content is the same. Instead of a category page they would go to, it would be a drop down menu displaying the further breakdown.
Old Nav = (Page -link-> Category -link-> Content)
New Nav = PageCategoryContent (link)ContentCategoryContentContent*list is collapsible so it's not too long
*user would click on a Category header to "drop it down" to display content links
So for the each Category link in the old nav would multiply by however many content pages allowing the user to browse though the content faster. But would increase the amount of links on every page.
Yes there are already breadcrumbs elsewhere on the page.
There shouldn't be a loading problem, it's just a UL list of links. Styled with css and a little java for a smooth accordion compression of all the links not currently displayed. I too would question how user friendly 247 links on a e-commerce site, sub-menu or not. I would consider breaking up the links over multiple general category pages.
As it stand now, it sounds like it could be a little overwhelming for the user. i recommend internal linking is not like link wheel but actually it is on page seo keyword linking on different pages .... It won't hurt your site since the links are part of your website pages. There are lots of sites that do have lots of pages and all were crawled by search engines. Since it will be convenient for your visitors to navigate using the new menu, you must go for it. Your question will be a little difficult to answer by anyone, we can advice you but we can't be sure about the outcome.
I suggest you must implement the new navigation and see how it works... In case if you loose something in your SEO performance you can easily recover it by reversing your navigation. Internal linking is oen of the basic topic of on page seo. You got really some of the best tips from some of experience personalities of forum.
Think of your customer first, I would suggest. It's a PR4 e-commerce site. The previous sidebar is pyramidal style navigation. For example AC, Fan, Heater, etc. Clicking those navigation link would take you to a category page with a break down (Ex. AC-size, AC price, AC-Brand, etc.)
For the new site design we were considering a collapsed menu style. Clicking a navigation bar would instead expand a menu with the sub-menus displayed (and not change the page you are on) till you click a link. That adds all the sub-menu links to every page. Would this new mass of links hurt the overall PR of the site? It's well over the 100 link informal rule from matt cutts. But I think it's more user friendly. You can browse the different categories without having to switch pages. Are you going to have massive content to counter act the number of links on each page? It won't hurt your site... for a few reasons. 1) you are PR4 and could be considered an authority site already, which gives your site an advantage and 2) interlinking your own content is not considered full outbound links and will just appear normal to search engines.
Your would be doing yourself a favor by interlinking like this. I have done SEO for many ecommerce sites and they just don't get penalized for interlinking. Quote: Originally Posted by moneylizard It won't hurt your site... for a few reasons. 1) you are PR4 and could be considered an authority site already, which gives your site an advantage and 2) interlinking your own content is not considered full outbound links and will just appear normal to search engines.
Your would be doing yourself a favor by interlinking like this. I have done SEO for many ecommerce sites and they just don't get penalized for interlinking. when you redesign your site you should redesign your site with seo and user friendly navigations...
1.) you should create your site pages within two clicks from your homepage
2.) use breadcrumbs navigation links or bottom internal links.. it would not hurt your website page ranking, but it would be quite weird that you increase so many links at one time. So don't do that so quicly. Any OBL (out bound link) will hurt your pagerank, not traffic. If the more links you have the less rank juice the page will consume. It all depends on if you really want the links there and you think its worth it.
But yes every link direct toward a site not on your domain will hurt your rank. So it seems like it won't hurt to have so many links on all pages. None of them are outbound links to other domains it's all internal site navigation. Also the content is already there. It was just accessed previously though a middle "category breakdown" page. The amount of clicks a user would need to access the content is the same. Instead of a category page they would go to, it would be a drop down menu displaying the further breakdown.
Old Nav = (Page -link-> Category -link-> Content)
New Nav = PageCategoryContent (link)ContentCategoryContentContent*list is collapsible so it's not too long
*user would click on a Category header to "drop it down" to display content links
So for the each Category link in the old nav would multiply by however many content pages allowing the user to browse though the content faster. But would increase the amount of links on every page.
Yes there are already breadcrumbs elsewhere on the page.
There shouldn't be a loading problem, it's just a UL list of links. Styled with css and a little java for a smooth accordion compression of all the links not currently displayed. I too would question how user friendly 247 links on a e-commerce site, sub-menu or not. I would consider breaking up the links over multiple general category pages.
As it stand now, it sounds like it could be a little overwhelming for the user. i recommend internal linking is not like link wheel but actually it is on page seo keyword linking on different pages .... It won't hurt your site since the links are part of your website pages. There are lots of sites that do have lots of pages and all were crawled by search engines. Since it will be convenient for your visitors to navigate using the new menu, you must go for it. Your question will be a little difficult to answer by anyone, we can advice you but we can't be sure about the outcome.
I suggest you must implement the new navigation and see how it works... In case if you loose something in your SEO performance you can easily recover it by reversing your navigation. Internal linking is oen of the basic topic of on page seo. You got really some of the best tips from some of experience personalities of forum.