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Site Navigation & Google SEO

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Site navigation is one of those areas that has many facets of importance when it comes to both SEO and usability.  A good site navigation makes it easier for Google to crawl and index a site, but it also needs to be usable for visitors to the site, since many use that same navigation to find their way around a site.

An interesting question came up about if Google views different types of site navigation as better for ranking or SEO.

The question: With regards to main navigation, are some types better than others or does it really not matter as long as it’s usable?

Here is what John Mueller from Google responded.

As far as I’ve seen, it doesn’t matter. So looking back at the number of sites I’ve looked at from the help forums to larger sites that have come to us, I don’t think I’ve ever run across an issue where the normal site navigation has caused any kind of SEO problems.

Kind of outside of the general issue of you have a terrible URL structure and we can’t crawl you without finding five bazillion URLs. But that’s kind of the normal navigation structure, if you have a kind of a mega menu style, or you have dropdowns, those kinds of things.

That’s really more more up to you, and more usability than SEO.

There are some points that Mueller doesn’t mention.  You do need to make sure it is crawlable – but that is easy to check with a Google Fetch and Render in Search Console, so that Google can understand the navigation, since it can help Google crawl and understand the site’s hierarchy and pages/sections that are likely more important.

There is also potential issues with Google’s upcoming mobile first indexing where sites have a more involved navigational structure on desktop with a “lighter” version on mobile.  Mueller has commented on that previously here.

Another site navigation SEO tactic some sites utilize is nofollow on navigation, either for some navigational links or all of them, which is specific for crawl budget purposes.  To this is another situation where the use of nofollow on navigation could have an impact on the site’s overall SEO.

Here is the video:

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.

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Comments

  1. So there would be no site penalty if you went from a pure CSS3 menu to a javascript or jquery menu in a site redesign? Everything I have read says that google does penalize for a javascript menu. I know they sure will for javascript tabs. Trying to get mobile ready, I put my main content in tabs and made no other change and dropped from 2-5 on page one to the second page for my main search terms. So switching from css to javascript for the menu scares me, but finding a good design that isn’t javascript is about impossible.